Chapter Thirty-Seven: Whispers in the Mountains

"Months," the man said, hissing the word through black teeth, angrily spitting a wad of tobacco to the side. "We've been sitting down here, starving, for months."

Murmurs rippled through the group, and several rapped tin spoons on unused plates in agreement. It might have been a roar had the motley band had any more energy than they did.

"ShinRa troops everywhere," the man spat, "as if to mock us. We could have moved months ago, and traded places with those ShinRa dogs."

The response was weaker than the last. Most men were slumped over, trying to sleep in the frozen filth of the streets. The plate kept the snow out, which likely saved their lives at least, but the temperatures were still bitterly low. For men with nothing more than threadbare trousers and shirts to call their own, the place was dangerous. Every night, the cold whisked another away.

"We wait for the order."

This voice, in stark contrast, was clear and strong. Most took the lash of resistance in silence, too exhausted and sick to fight. This man lingered in the shadows, seated regally on a chair propped up against the last standing wall of a hovel. His face and hands were clean, and he was dressed in a wool trench coat from his throat to the top of his knee-high leather boots, a fur hat on his head and a cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth.

"No more!" the pauper said. From all his conviction, he might have made a strong backlash, if he had not fallen to a fit of coughing just after. "We're starving. We're tired and cold. Men die every night. This isn't what we were promised. We're leaving our homes and families to join this sad excuse for an army, and you have the nerve to treat us this way?"

"A convoy will bring supplies soon," the shadowed man said, taking a long, leisurely draw on his cigarette and slowly exhaling a wisp of smoke. "As for your homes and families," the man scoffed and shook a scattering of tiny embers into the frozen wind, "it's not as if you really had much to leave behind in the first place."

Still murmuring, the man held his peace and sat down on the barren earth. Beside him, a boy with dirty blonde hair looked up at him with large, brown eyes. "Papa," the boy whispered. "Why don't we go back? Why don't we go back to Sissy?"

"Because this man's going to get us a home," the man said, grunting. "We have to do our part and fight, but then we'll be living a better life."

"Up on the plate?"

"Yeah."

The boy bit his lip. "Is that man…bad?" Young as he was, he knew better than to point to the figure lounging in the shadows, as if languishing in a summer paradise only he could feel.

"He's stark mad, son," the man whispered, lowering his voice to a breath. "He's going to take on the General himself. No loss to us when he loses." The man gave a small smile and ruffled the boy's hair. "We're using him. He's going to get us revenge on ShinRa, and then we can get a life out of the slums."

"Oh," the boy said. "But…the fight…"

"You don't worry about that now, son."

"But what if the others are right and we really do have to face Seph—"

"It won't happen. Now go to sleep and dream of the big, warm house waiting for us."

The boy still looked uncertain, but lowered his head to the dust and closed his eyes.

It was when the man was settling down to sleep that he noticed the shadow figure's gaze right on him. He was grinning, teeth gleaming in the insidious half-light.

"You don't think I can do it, eh?" The man chuckled, low and deep and deranged. "Watch me. It won't be long now."


Hana watched two continents fly by beneath her in a daze. It felt surreal to be returning to her homeland at last, and under such circumstances.

Sephiroth was silent as well, sitting in a seat not even two feet from her own, but hardly dazed. His attention was so singularly fixed on the earth beneath that it was alarming.

Something was making him uneasy.

She had first noticed it after they had crossed the ocean separating the continents. When the coasts of Costa del Sol became the mountains of North Corel, he had turned to her quickly, startling her out of her daze. "What?" he asked her, voice crisp and curt, as if it had been militaristic inquiry.

Hana looked at him and shrugged. "I didn't say anything."

"…Hmph." And he went back to staring out the window.

But he turned to her two more times, eyes narrowing in suspicion each time. After the last, he sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. "Apologies," he said.

"Do you have a headache?" Hana asked.

"…Yes," he answered, and the delay confused her.

"Maybe there's a pill you could take…"

"It's nothing." And like that the subject was closed.

They continued to follow the mountains. Hana liked to watch the sharp peaks and dives in the land. Despite its ruggedness, it had a certain beauty, and she liked the texture. She even reached out her hand once, imagining how it would feel to run her hands over the entire mountain range like a bolt of cloth laid on a table.

Sephiroth's wing appeared out of nowhere with a great whoosh.

Hana cried out in surprise as a wave of darkness slammed her back into the seat. Her head spun as it smacked against bone, and she saw stars for several seconds as she was smothered in the plumage, drowning in warm darkness and weighed down in its depths by its power. In panic she flailed against it, finally getting her head free to gasp in a breath again as she was washed in light. "W-What was that?" she said as she spat out a feather that had gotten in her mouth, Then, flustered, she realized that her hands were entangled in the plumage and she pushed and kicked it away from her body.

"Sorry," Sephiroth said, and his voice was noticeably strained. The wing was – and she squinted to make sure she was seeing it right – trembling. He was trying to withdraw it, and yet it kept trying to extend itself. She could see the battle Sephiroth waged for control in his eyes and in the deep furrows in his brow.

Hana swallowed. She had not seen his wing since the night of the gala, and she had forgotten how large it was. So curious a thing to be extending from the shoulder of a man – she marveled that the muscles of his back could support it. Afraid to be caught staring, she kept her hands firmly clasped in her lap and eyes to the side as she pretended not to see how hard a time Sephiroth was having withdrawing the wing into his side again.

Perhaps it really did have a will of its own.

But why now?

Hana looked out the window. There was nothing but mountains beneath. She looked back to see where they had been when his wing had extended, and could barely see a small cluster of homes in the distance. It was a tiny, quaint mountain town.

"Are you all right?" she asked, blushing. She felt embarrassed to be beside him when he was so clearly struggling despite trying to maintain his pride.

"Fine," he hissed through grit teeth. He inhaled sharply as if in pain, and Hana's eyes turned to him despite herself. His head was in his hands, and he was applying significant pressure to his temples with all five fingers.

"I just need to…rest."

Hana watched the fallen feathers on the ground at her feet dance in the soft winds Sephiroth's wing created as it quivered and swept from side to side.

She knew it was bad, because that was the first time that she'd ever heard him admit that he needed rest.


"Can I help you, General Sephiroth?"

He admitted he was taken aback by this woman. She spoke with authority, unflinching, before him, head raised the slightest degree so she was staring straight into his eyes.

It was something that few people dared to try.

It was admirable.

He hummed, intrigued. He wished he could see more of her face through the veil than lips painted bright as blood.

If he was not on duty, surrounded by his men, the questions he would have asked her would have been notably different.

But as it was, he had a job to do.

"Are you the leader of this band?" he asked.

"No. I'm as much a wanderer as any of the men here."

"What is your name?"
"Himiko," she said. "I am a traveling priestess. These merchants are escorting me to my grandfather's shrine."

A lie. He knew it immediately. They had called her "himesama". He knew enough about Wutai and its language to know that simple shrine maidens did not merit the most honorific title of "sama". Nor, he thought, did they require an entourage, or speak such flawless Continental.

"Himiko, then," Sephiroth said. "I assume that I need no introduction, nor do I need to explain by whom I was sent."

The breeze parted her veil and he saw the curve of her lips. She was smirking beneath that veil, a motion that made the corners of his lips curl as well. He very much would have liked to hold a very different conversation with this woman.

"ShinRa intelligence believes that weapons are being shipped through the area to a group of military rogues calling themselves the Crescent Unit. My orders are to patrol this road, confiscate any weapons we find, and detain any involved with the transport of these weapons."

"A mighty task," the woman said. "One might think from your actions that ShinRa already rules this country."

He was very aware that his men's eyes had grown to the size of saucers. She had just talked back to the most dangerous man in the world.

Sephiroth laughed. Who was this Himiko?

"I do not care about this war. I truly hold nothing but the deepest apathy toward your cause," she said. "But as you clearly hold the upper hand, General, we will comply with your wishes and allow the search." She turned to the merchants and spoke in rapid, flowing Wutaiese.

He didn't have to speak Wutaiese to know that she may have consented, but the men didn't.

The exchange between Himiko and the men of the caravan was easy to follow. Anger, and fear in the men, protesting. Himiko struck back with authority, but no small amount of confusion. "Nande?" she kept asking. "Doushitano?"

"Mendokusai," some said. Others hissed words that he knew were unsavory insults. But as she kept insisting, they were finding it increasingly harder to fight against her.

"Search," she said. "Forgive my men for being so disagreeable."

The merchants continued to shout as Sephiroth nodded to his men, who immediately pried open the doors of the carts and entered. One of the merchants even grabbed Himiko by the arms, speaking rapidly, in panic, shaking her.

Sephiroth watched in silence. He had his suspicions about what was going on, but was not certain enough to intervene just yet.

Sephiroth's troops announced their find by dumping burlap sacks of guns, explosives, and more traditional weapons onto the frozen road.

The cadets at Sephiroth's side aimed their rifles at the group, shouting at them to freeze.

The men threw themselves in front of Himiko, shielding her with their bodies.

A wind parted Himiko's veil, and on her painted, alabaster face was unfeigned shock.

"It seems your caravan was hiding something," Sephiroth said. Under gunpoint, the merchants dared not move, but they hissed their anger, and were protecting the woman with their bodies.

But she would not stand for it. Unafraid of the guns pointed at her, undeterred by the pleading hands of her comrades, she pushed to the front of the group and addressed Sephiroth directly. "There has been a misunderstanding. These weapons are not ours."

"They were found in your caravan, were they not?"

"I oversaw the loading myself. Those…"

But the evidence did not lie. Bag after bag was thrown out of the cart and into the street. Out spilled spears, katanas, darts, crossbows, machine guns, hand guns, rifles, bayonettes…everything imaginable.

"One of the men," she said slowly, "Tateishi. He is a blacksmith. He must have wanted to sell these in the next town…"

"A blacksmith," Sephiroth said. "Is there a gunsmith among you as well?"

The woman was thrust into silence.

"If you cannot explain this, I have my orders."

Her mouth was pressed into a grim line. "There has been a misunderstanding."

"The evidence speaks for itself," he said, though the pieces of the story were coming together, and it was quite different than the one he was leading her to think he believed.

It would not be advantageous for either of them to speak of it now.

"I…I am sure the men can explain if you give me time."

"Speak now. Who are you, who do you serve, and where were you going?"

Her mouth fell open. "It's not…It's not what you think!" she screamed. She stepped forward but was halted by the guns of Sephiroth's troops.

"Himesama!" the men screamed again. They would have leapt to her, but his troops had moved in to create a barrier between them and her, a barrier enforced at gunpoint.

She slowly straightened from her lunge forward, hands at her sides, head as high as always but her shoulders had dropped.

She was down, and she knew it.

Sephiroth walked slowly forward, step by slow step, until he stood only a breath away from her. Throughout his approach, she did not move, but tensed, hands balling into fists, whether in anger or fear he could not tell.

Sephiroth pulled the straw hat and veil from her head, and looked deep into her dark, earthen eyes for the first time.

There was a fire there, like he had seldom seen before, and never in one of Wutai's daughters. It burned undaunted by the guns, by the betrayal of her comrades, brave and bold and fearless even in the literal shadow of the man who had nearly single-handedly ravaged her homeland.

This was no shrine maiden.

"I will ask you once more," Sephiroth said slowly. "Who are you? Who do you serve? And where were you going?"

She took a deep breath in and out through her nose, breath frail wisps in the winter air, and said nothing.

"I have orders. If you will not give your answers to me I have no choice to deliver you to someone trained to extract them by force."

"You cannot hurt me," she whispered, voice hot as dragon's breath.

They had reached a stalemate. Neither would back down.

Sephiroth couldn't remember the last time he'd been brought to a stalemate.

"It doesn't matter how you torture me, you will not obtain what you seek. I have no connection with the Crescent Unit, or the Wutai Imperial Military. I am just a miko, seeking peaceful passage to the shrine of my grandfather."

Sephiroth searched her eyes long and hard, and she did not back down from the scrutiny. She, in turn glared him down as if her gaze alone could change his mind.

He believed her.

He knew she was innocent.

"Lock her up," Sephiroth ordered. "The Turks will make her talk. Detain the others as well, separate from her. We'll see if a night in isolation will change her mind."

"No!" she screamed, but his men were upon her at once. "You don't know what you're doing, you fool!"

But he did know what he was doing.

She could kick and scream all she wanted, but he was saving her life.