Yeo! 2020 is legit disappearing. Half way through May, already?

I don't own anything, anyone or anywhere you recognise. Sapphire, along with a few others who'll crop up every now and then, are mine.

Huge thanks to my first reviewer for this story, ievuxs1! Means more than I can say to hear from you. To know that people are excited for where this story goes is class, and I'm right there with you!

Yep, I'm more clueless about where this is going than I have any right to be. You've been warned.

At the very least I'm actually playing through Crisis Core for the first time. Only ever really watched through the cutscenes before, so I'm trying to pick up on as much detail as I can. Even if the extra details aren't too significant, it helps to get that extra content, immerse myself you know? Like just yesterday I discovered that a glass of Banora White juice is 120 gil! Will be fun to see if I can make use of that.

Chapter 4 - Knock

I had grown to quite like Nibelheim, the town that had taken me in when I was ill and had coaxed me back to full health with months of persistent, difficult effort. You'd have to be heartless not to appreciate that, after all. There was something to be said for the mentality and good nature of people from a small town.

I had never met a collection of people who were all as kind-hearted as the next, enough to care for an ill and presumed dangerous outsider. Even the older man, who had kept quiet but obviously had some reservations about sheltering me, had done his fair share of the labour it took to keep me living. I knew he hadn't been particularly concerned whether I survived, but he was concerned about his neighbours and their continued health, and so he had swallowed his reservations and minded me every once in a while. That camaraderie was almost breath-taking. Every part working together for the continuing best interest of the whole, whether they agreed on what that was or not.

I had some vague recollections, within the deep recesses of my memory, of a place that had kind neighbours who greeted each other with smiles in the mornings. I couldn't put a name to the town, nor a timeframe for when and how long I was there, but even it hadn't felt as kind, or as well-intentioned.

There was a part of me that didn't want to leave. It presented these facts and teased me with visions of an idyllic life; a small wooden house with a chimney, a job that had me out before dawn and back after dusk, dirty and weary and satisfied. It portrayed peace and security, away from the dangers that had brought me to Nibelheim in the first place.

Maybe, if I stayed here, I'd be free of those dangers. Maybe one day they'd catch up to me and take me by surprise.

Either way, if I stayed here, I wasn't preventing that danger affecting anyone else. And despite how cushy my life could be, that would be unforgivable. How could I go through a trauma like that, and pretend it didn't happen, pretend that it wouldn't happen again?

It might not happen again. But it might. If I didn't do anything about it, to stop those responsible, then there was always a possibility. There was no way I could start fresh without knowing that others were safe from the same fate.

I at least had that much honour. Or maybe I just wanted revenge? Hard to say.

Nibelheim wasn't going anywhere. That little cottage would be just as attainable in a few months or years, I was sure. And once I was done protecting future generations from the scientist's wrath, I could work to repay my debt to this small town and the people in it.

Noble, I know.

"What do you think?"

The enquiry, slightly louder than how she had previously spoken, jolted me from my thoughts. "What do I think?" I echoed, seeing her nod eagerly. "Uhh…"

"Do you agree with me? Or maybe I've been too harsh." She didn't strike me as the type to be too harsh.

"No, not at all, I agree with you. You're probably being too soft, if anything." I thought that was a fairly good cover.

"Oh, well that's reassuring," she said with a relieved exhale. "So why weren't you listening then?"

The smile that had taken over, which was one of secret relief, froze on my face. "Uh, what?"

"You agreed that you hadn't been listening to me," she clarified. "Even said I wasn't being harsh enough."

I rolled my eyes, "That was mean."

"Lying's mean," she lazily rebuked, before leaning forward to sit on the edge of her seat, meeting my eye. "What's up with you?"

Well, I'd just come to my decision, there was no point beating around the bush that I could see. "I'm gonna leave soon."

I wasn't quite sure how she would take it, given that she had spent the last few months looking after me, making sure I didn't bite the dust. I was grateful, and had expressed that every day since I had been able, but I knew it wasn't something I could repay. I wanted to, but how could I return a favour of that magnitude?

She had saved my life, I owed her that. But I also had autonomy, and while I wanted to pay her back, I needed to resolve this first.

I supposed we had got to know each other quite well since I had regained most of my senses. That being said, I was still massively impressed when she nodded calmly, after a few moments of processing, and asked, "When?"

With no more precise answer than I had already given, I shrugged and repeated, "Soon." At her exasperated look, I looked to the ceiling, shrugging again. "In the next week or two, maybe?"

"Make it two," she ordered, "I want to put you through your paces. You can walk yourself into the ground if you're that keen, but if that happens within five minutes of you leaving, it'll make me look bad."

"We can't have that," I agreed. "Let everyone in the village know how poorly you took care of me?"

My proposal was met with a flat look. "On second thoughts, I don't care if I look bad, let me help you pack."

"Good one."

...

It seemed that Nibelheim's little night-time showers - which I had grown fond of - were not limited to night-time, resulting in my fondness waning a little. Maybe a little more than a little, in the interest of full disclosure.

It wasn't torrential, of course, but there was nothing pleasant about the effect it had. With Nibelheim being a town based in a crevasse, the terrain was quite rocky and dusty, and became a gross, squelchy, muddy mess with anything more than fifteen minutes of fairly heavy rain. Worse again was the fact that the temperature almost seemed to rise rather than fall when the heavens opened, so a muggy heat weighed in the air and left a layer of sweat on me, exacerbated by the extra effort of trudging through mud.

Plus, I was suuuuuper unfit. When did that happen?

…Well, the answer to that was pretty obvious, it was in the many weeks I spent floating about inside a tube, not lifting as much as an eyelid, let alone a leg or arm. But this is ridiculous. I thought she was exaggerating when she said I'd drop within five minutes of setting off.

She had offered me aid coming down the cramped stairway of her home, which I refused, and that in itself took me five minutes. Well, eight, and a half, but who was counting? I had propped myself up against the doorframe as she glided out past me, and walked within grabbing distance as I staggered. Pride kept me marching upright for no more than a minute, after which my back started to bend, my shoulders started to hunch, and my steps gradually became shorter and shakier until I eventually came to a stop, wavering threateningly over a mud puddle.

I tried to convert my righteous anger and agitation into determination to continue, with her standing at my side with arms stretched around me, ready to grab me if I happened to crumple and fall limp. It was humiliating.

No, it was humbling. I wasn't humiliated, she wasn't laughing at me, and frankly if she was I wouldn't care. Instead, I was faced with a challenge I thought I could overcome but fell mightily short, and so I knew that there was work to be done. It was a starting point by which I could measure my future success.

"We're heading back," she bossed some seconds later, recognising that I had gone as far as I was able, and wrapped an arm firmly about my shoulders, both hands grabbing a firm hold of my upper arms and supporting me on our slow march back to the house. It was a lot closer than I had thought, a lovely extra big slice of that humble pie from earlier.

When we made it back to the house, after a significant length of time, she all but dropped me onto an armchair with a huff, both of us breathing a little heavier than we would like to admit.

"At the risk of sounding like a terrible person," she began, to my chagrin, "that was a lot worse than I was expecting."

"You should be a motivational speaker," I retorted caustically, rubbing an eye with lethargy.

"How long did you say you were there for?"

I looked to the ceiling, a little exhausted of this line of questioning. "I was in Shinra Manor for a week at most, probably. Before that, I don't know. I think a few months. Late December to early March. Unless you lied about it being March before." She had claimed it was March when I first gained some semblance of a rational mind and consciousness, a couple months ago. May now, and about the wettest, saddest May I think I had ever witnessed.

"I've never seen anything like it. And you wouldn't have moved at all in that time?" I shook my head, frowning as she ignored my (completely insincere) accusation. She already knew my dry brand of sarcasm far too well. "So strange. I've never seen muscle degradation so severe, and yet you look in perfect health. You know you travelled over twice the distance from Shinra Manor that day than you did just now?"

I hummed, starting to feel humiliated rather than humbled. I hadn't known that. "Adrenaline, I guess," I offered with another noncommittal shrug, then found my brow furrowing in consternation. "What was that about looking in perfect health?"

She looked puzzled. "You… look… well?" she offered hesitantly. "Like, really good. Like perfect physical shape good."

I looked down at myself uncertainly. The SOLDIER uniform, while undeniably flattering to its male members (to be expected, when that was over 99% of them) was less so on me.

Wait. Eww. How long had I been wearing this now?

The trousers were baggy and mostly shapeless, made to be long-lasting rather than attractive. My wool turtleneck was sleeveless, and yeah, I supposed my arms looked well-toned. More so than I could recall, in all their ghostly pale glory.

Nice to know that consistent effort and overcoming struggles is entirely unnecessary when maintaining a good physique, if you spend several months in a tube of goop. The professor is missing a trick if he doesn't quit Shinra and open a beauty spa.

"How could I look like I have muscles but have no strength in them?" I questioned, poking and manipulating parts of my arm with mild but noticeable bulges; they just felt like I would expect them to feel, sturdy and firm. "I mean, they're not airbags, they feel like muscle."

Suddenly she was there, pressing on my other arm. "That's muscle," she confirmed certainly. "Maybe this is to do with your head."

"My head?" I echoed, raising an eyebrow. She rapped her knuckles against my forehead.

"Your noggin," she confirmed. "Maybe somewhere in your subconscious, after your months in captivity, you've decided you can't really remember how to use your muscles and do stuff correctly."

"Sometimes you sound so intellectual, medically speaking."

"Shut it," she berated, knocking on my head a little harder than before. "The brain is a wacky thing," she continued unperturbed, while I rubbed where she had knocked. "If you've been shut away for a while, it may just take a while to get to grips with how everything works again."

"I'm assuming you have no real clue," I mentioned, because her voice had that uncertain 'who knows?' ring to it.

"Yeah," she confirmed with a nod, leaving my shoulders drooping. "We'll continue as we are for now, doesn't make sense to diagnose on just one little walk. It's understandable that you'd be pretty out of whack, after that fever let alone what caused it, so I'm sure you just need to practice a little."

I smirked, "You have a really impressive bedside manner; I've never felt less reassured of something in my life."

"Good thing I'm not a doctor then," she shrugged, and stood to her full height. "I'm gonna make lunch, scrambled eggs on toast, and you can sit there and recover. We'll walk some more after."

I sat as the picture of innocence until she left the room, and then immediately braced both hands on the arms of the chair she had dropped me into, prepared to do the opposite of what she told me. After all, if her one idea to fix me was to have me keep practicing and training, then what benefit would sitting about be?

Time to train—

"Ouch," I mumbled, with my nose in the carpet and limbs sprawled about me. At least I'd got as far as getting out of the chair, my arms quivering under the strain and knees knocking. It must have been a gentle fall because she didn't come back into the room, so it gave me a window of opportunity to pull myself back up into the chair, which took about five minutes with my shaking limbs.

But I succeeded, and with a few minutes to spare to look situated and comfortable before she returned with a tray, placing it on my lap.

I looked at my food. "What did you say this was?"

"Scrambled eggs."

"…You're sure?" At her offended look, I pushed the steaming food around with my fork, trying to assemble an acceptable forkful. "What's the black bits?"

"Pepper!"

"All of it?" I asked doubtfully, brow creased.

"Most of it," she griped after a pause. I stuck my tongue out in displeasure, but dutifully dug through the concoction in a bid to get even one forkful of edible egg. She sat down opposite as I did so, the silence between us quickly becoming pensive. She obviously had a question she wanted to ask.

"Stop thinking so loudly and just ask," I gruffly advised, cringing as the taste of burnt food spread across my tongue with my first bite.

"Do you know how long you were in there?" she eventually questioned, sounding hesitant.

I examined her with a furrowed brow. She'd already asked that. "I said before. A few months, maybe more. Unless you mean here, I was only in the manor a week, at most."

"I don't know if that's true," she expressed her doubts, making me frown and set my fork back on the tray, watching her attentively. "At first we thought you were the creature from Shinra Manor, the fifth wonder. But I don't think—"

"The what?"

She laughed awkwardly, and shrugged. "The kids in town talk about the seven wonders of Nibelheim, one of them is to do with Shinra Manor, there's something in there that… sounds like it's in pain, and never stops. It's been that way for years, but we've never figured out why."

"Ah, you mean the coffin guy."

She looked startled. "Say again?"

Less interested now that I was the more informed one in the conversation - as it should always be, naturally - I resumed my dig for unburnt egg. "Told you I was only there for the few days, I woke up to that. I was put in a room with a bunch of coffins, with one of them holding that guy. I offered to bust him out but he refused." As I put my second forkful of egg in my mouth, I wondered whether I should've divulged that much information. A coffin room with a living being locked into one seemed like a thing Shinra would want to keep secret.

"Wow," she muttered, disturbed, and let the room fall into silence again for a few moments. "Well… we ruled that out pretty soon, since it continued after we found you. Do you think we should—?"

I shook my head as she began to ask, even though she didn't look too pleased by the refusal. "I don't think there's any reasoning with him, he said he needed to atone for his sins. If he doesn't want to come out, and he's been there so long, he might be dangerous if you try to force him. I won't tell you not to though. He probably needs some kind of intervention."

"I'll mention it to a few people, I wouldn't go alone," she assured me. I squinted at her, as if to question her assumption that I was concerned for her safety, but still approving of her caution. "I feel like you might try to stop me, so I'll wait until after you're gone."

Oof. That stung. There's that passive aggression I was expecting in the first place. "That's all I ask," I bit back sarcastically. She returned a smirk that I hated because I was supposed to be the only one to have that kind of smirk. "Maybe he'll teach you how to cook."

She scowled at me, as I stole her smirk. It was mine in the first place though. "Protein. Burnt or otherwise, if you don't eat, you won't have any energy to practice walking with."

Now we were both frowning, so I guess mutual unhappiness was better than one person happy and the other not. I cringed as I took a third bite, swallowing it down with haste - at least scrambled egg didn't need much chewing.

When I finished, she took my tray away, and we walked circles around the room. I missed the outside, but I liked her approach of shoving me into the nearest cushioned piece of furniture any time it looked like I was going to fall. I think she liked it more than I did.

The next day, we took a second spin outside. I think she was going a little bit stir crazy from being closed into the house all day for however long it had been, and I couldn't blame her, because I was the same and I hadn't been conscious for ninety percent of it. Probably the technique we had adopted the previous afternoon was the safest way to go (and least embarrassing because we got a lot of peculiar looks from passers-by and nosy neighbours peering out between closed curtains) but neither of us acknowledged it, because we both needed it.

During our walk, we were treated to a lovely May shower, as seemed to be common here in Nibelheim. It was very mild though, almost refreshing in its coolness. It was the first time in a while, perhaps ever in my time in the town, that the rain seemed to lower the temperature rather than increase it, so it was welcome while we laboured.

We passed the house we had stopped outside the previous day, so that was a comfort, enough to spur me on another house's width before my legs gave out entirely. Improvement, but much less than I had hoped, and I could tell by her silence that she felt the same. It'd be nice to justify it by saying that we worked too hard the day before, but we hadn't. I felt better, stronger when we set off that day than I had the previous. We had another spin around the house that evening, less so than the day before, because we were both letting ourselves believe that I was put under strain and not addressing that we both felt I hadn't been.

I didn't sleep very well that night, so I decided that strain would be better.

The third morning saw the sun shining intermittently through light clouds, warm and encouraging. We had breakfast, a quiet affair, as it usually was; there was always a little build-up of anticipation and nervous energy with us in the mornings, neither of us feeling any desire to devote too much attention to our usual sarcastic banter.

It'd be easy to say that my progress that morning on our daily walk outside was effortless, and that the full circle around the neighbourhood was the natural next step after the four or so houses I had barely staggered past on the days previous. Unfortunately, my honesty beat my pride, and I had to admit that the fifty-five minutes it took to circle the twenty-or-so houses in the neighbourhood was among the most painful and gruelling hours I was able to recall.

I wasn't even embarrassed about all the gawking locals. Let them gawk. Let them be witness to my great victory in the face of adversity.

No, the embarrassing bit came later, when I clutched the sides of the bath, and with a great heave, I remained in the bath without moving an inch. My arms quivered with the effort, and gave out seconds later. My legs, though instructed to gather beneath me, remained still. Yep. I needed help.

This was truly my lowest moment. I swallowed thickly, wishing away the embarrassment, and called for my helper, who was sure to hold this over my head for as long as I lived.

"Lana."

My call was a little quiet, probably if she was on the other side of the room she wouldn't have heard it, let alone the other side of the house. So I tried again, still reluctant to be heard, "Lana!"

I was sure that was loud enough. But I didn't hear anything in response, neither approaching footsteps nor a call back. So, in an effort to overcome my mortification and stir up some adrenaline, I shouted her name as obnoxiously and loudly as I could, "LAAAANAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

She slammed the door open, "WHAT?!"

"Help me out of the bath, please," I requested innocently. She sighed heavily, but dutifully entered to assist, handing me a towel to make myself decent before hoisting me up enough to get my feet beneath me. Sure, when I was standing on them I could feel them alright.

With a towel tucked around me, and an iron grip on both arms, she acted as a crutch to help me step out of the bath. It took a considerable length of time, making me grateful for my well-practiced and secure towel-tucking technique, but eventually we were successful. A victory worth celebrating, in my opinion, but I was happy enough just to perch myself on the edge of the tub and reach in to pull the plug. As I did so I heard my helper mutter, "You've gotta be kidding me."

I cast her an inquisitive look over my shoulder. "What?" I asked, and if her flinch was any indication, I wasn't supposed to hear anything.

"Just…" she trailed off, and sighed, shaking her head, seemingly lost for words. Then she waved a hand towards me, in a vague gesture. "If you knew how hard I work just to stay in shape…"

I pressed my lips together in sympathetic silence, as she braced me for the walk down the hall, my arm over her shoulder. I had heard her rising with the sun most mornings, closing the door on her way out for her morning jog, rain or shine, chill or humid heat. I admired her for it, because she obviously hated doing so, so her dedication was hugely impressive. Such a shame then, that it wasn't her who got put in a big tube of goop for months on end.

…Sarcasm, sure, but well-meaning sarcasm. It's not like I would legitimately wish it on her.

"You know I didn't eat for months," I pointed out with a raised eyebrow.

Her lips pressed together, she nodded sagely, and said, "I do like eating."

"Yeah, so do I," I agreed lightheartedly, with a laugh. "Speaking of which, I'll cook today."

She stopped us both, halfway down the hallway to my room. I raised a questioning eyebrow at her. "You know how to cook?"

Lana's doubt offended me. "Why would I not know how to cook?"

"What can you cook?" she asked as a deviation, one which I noticed with a frown but didn't address.

"Uh," I contemplated, "stir fry."

We resumed our journey, her letting out a bark of a laugh at my response, seemingly appeased. "You mean you can throw some meat and vegetables into a frying pan?"

Scowling as we entered my bedroom, I sniped, "Yeah, and I can take it off the heat when it's done cooking, before it starts burning."

"Ouch," she deadpanned with a wry smirk, and pushed me facedown onto my bed. "I'll go to the shops then, chef. Shame you couldn't have mentioned this plan while we were still out."

"Shame you can't help burning the food," I retorted, both of us laughing in good spirits as she slammed the bedroom door on her way out. A similar slam came not a minute later, this time the front door.

The silence that followed was jarring but not unfamiliar. As a once active person turned temporary invalid, the lack of life and movement in an otherwise empty house did not sit well with me. I quickly threw on some clothes, lent from my carer so ill-fitting and requiring some tightly knotted drawstrings, and stood in the middle of the room, uncertainty clawing at me. What do I do now?

The answer was clear, as though there was never a question in the first place. You train. After all, what else was there?

Training on my own involved a lot of stretches and straining of muscles that walks and jogs wouldn't reach. Lana wanted to make sure I would be able to travel on my own, to have enough stamina to trek across the plains between villages as I needed to. But there was more to prepare for than just a dander across a wilderness. There might be threats that I would have to fight, or at least evade. Monsters for sure; maybe even pursuers from Shinra. Both of those things required sure- and light-footedness, and a confidence in my own ability, speed, and strength that I just didn't have yet. Limbs still felt uncertain, joints felt tight, and even my mind felt dulled from disuse, leaving me doubting if my own instincts would be enough to keep me out of trouble if it saw its way to me.

Plus, where I was going, I was planning on causing a ruckus. Conflict was a guarantee as far as I was concerned, and I needed to be sure of a fighting chance.

I could hear his voice in my head, berating me, telling me I was being too light on myself, encouraging me to put myself in harm's way and push beyond my own limits to really achieve. I felt appropriately placed to ignore it, because the man's heavy-handed approach had landed me between the infirmary walls more times than I cared to recall. Given that I was more-or-less taken out of action each day by walking reaffirmed that a slow rebuilding of muscle familiarity in the rest of my body just made sense.

There was also the matter that I generally tried to avoid, which was that I was uncertain of my own strength at the moment. By all appearances I was in good shape, but that wasn't what I meant.

No, I was talking about the unfamiliar, eerie, bright blue and slightly green tinge I had noticed my eyes had taken on when running my bath earlier. That was what had me uncertain.

With this new discovery, and now that I was alone to really give it some thought, I felt a compulsion to get to grips with my own history. The intensity of this need struck me, so I dedicated myself to getting it right. It took three pieces of paper torn into small scraps with significant events jotted on each, two pens (one broke, completely by accident as far as my carer would know), and a headache.

Eventually I cracked it, the timeline that most comfortably fit my fractured memories, after pouring over my barely legible scribbles late into the night.

Night, morning— whatever time, it was late enough that the birds weren't singing. And I hadn't slept, so it still counted as night.

September '97, at the tender age of nearly sixteen (what was I thinking?) I joined Shinra as a Cadet. At the time, the company was at war with Wutai, so it seemed quick turnover was a must; in under four months, we underwent our SOLDIER treatment, and became SOLDIER: Third Classes.

The specifics of that period were a blur. Since my head decided my time in SOLDIER was my happy place under duress, it wasn't straightforward separating fact from fiction. For the sake of the timeline, and my stress levels, I decided not to focus on the exact events in SOLDIER and guessed at a few major milestones. Promotion to Second Class I hesitatingly put in summer '98. Broad strokes.

December '98 brought about my failed attempt to desert, and saw me captured and taken back to Midgar, to the Shinra building. To the madman who orchestrated a disaster that put a train full of civilians in jeopardy. What happened there was both frustratingly blurred and agonisingly clear. Avoiding detail, the 'what' of that experience was vivid, while the 'why' was ambiguous. I found myself curious, almost entitled to know why it happened, though I doubted that knowledge would change how I felt about December '98 to March '99.

My carer filled in that it was the seventh of March that saw me breaking out of my container in the Shinra Manor basement and collapsing not far from the centre of town. And then I slept and recovered, for a full two months. Yep. I lost two months recovering from mako addiction and whatever else that professor had inflicted on me. Today was the tenth of May, '99. Or the eleventh, technically, but that didn't overly matter. I was practically an adult. Still, that was my timeline, whether I liked it or not.

It was barely more detailed than the bare-bones version I had regaled my carer with some days before. I tried not to focus on how distressing that was, instead trying to take comfort in how accurate it felt to me. Accuracy was the key. If I could trust this as truth, then anything more I recalled as the days passed by could help to fill in the blanker areas. Those recollections would come in their own time. Until then, I was focusing on the present.

The present, being much closer to sunrise than I wanted it to be. If I was gonna halve my time around the neighbourhood, I needed to make sure I wouldn't fall asleep before I was off Lana's porch.

…

"Knock knock."

My voice echoed back, leaving me feeling deeply uncomfortable. The place was empty? The place was never empty.

And now this empty white room felt empty for the first time, an impressive feat considering it was always empty, or close to it. Devoid of everything except what was needed, and without any living being, except for one.

He was always here, but I had to amend that now, because now he wasn't.

"I thought we already did the whole you walking away thing," I mentioned with false bravado. "I… I'm sorry, I know it's been a while since I was last here. I'm just so tired, I've been training, rebuilding my strength, you know? Dreaming's hard to do when I'm already worn out during the day. I know that's no excuse, but…"

Here was me, apologising to a figment of my own imagination. This may be my second lowest moment. But it didn't even feel silly, or redundant, it felt important.

"I wonder if I'll say some of this stuff in the future, if I happen to see you again," I speculated wistfully. "That'd be some pretty insane déjà vu, don't you think?"

Silence, which I paused in my prompts to listen to for a few moments.

"Yeah, I don't know why I thought asking a question like that would actually get an answer," I admitted, before sighing. "C'mon, please don't hold this against me. You're still gonna be with me. I still need you."

I hated sounding so needy, but it was the truth. Training to leave was the easy part; I had to travel across two continents and figure out whether I was capable of such an undertaking starting tomorrow. As much as he was a mean, grumpy, disheartening, rude grandpa type of person, he was actually remarkably supportive, and could be weirdly good company.

"Give me something?" I pleaded, and after a few moments of silence, sighed again. "What do I have to do here?"

I let myself fall backwards, back meeting the floor solidly without any recoil or pain, and gazed at a white tiled ceiling. Sure, I knew him to hold a grudge, but he'd never pulled a disappearing act before. Usually if he was annoyed it was after I'd done something, and we hadn't even spoken yet.

"Is this you giving me a taste of my own medicine? Because I've been away for a while? I thought we were being mature lately." The last time we had spoken he had asked me to teach him humility, instead of acquiescing to whatever he would be least opposed to. That seemed mature, and a nice change.

"If we're being mature," his voice rang out in the silence, and suddenly he was hovering over me, bent at the waist and examining me with a wry smirk, "then why can't you wait for your host to welcome you? How very impatient."

Disregarding his reprimand, I smiled up at him, forgetting my dismay. "There you are! Took you long enough." I patted the floor next to me, and he accepted the invitation, even going as far as lying down next to me, gazing at the ceiling.

"I wouldn't like to spoil you, responding immediately to your every beck and call," he dismissed, inspiring a roll of my eyes. "I thought we said our farewells already."

"You said I could come and visit!" I retorted defensively.

"Well if I'd known you'd hold me to it I might not have." Harsh words, but the wickedly amused tone eased the blow.

"And I suppose I should count myself lucky you let me in?" I asked with heavy sarcasm, receiving the expected response of a hum in the affirmative. "So generous of you."

"You're leaving tomorrow, then?" he asked, a sudden but not unexpected question. The heaviness of the question effectively quashed the pleasant atmosphere we'd had, and I sighed, turning my head his direction but eyeing his chest to avoid meeting his gaze.

I confirmed, "That's the idea. Lana's a little sceptical but I think she always will be. I can always go back again if I'm struggling, it's no big deal."

"And what happens if you can't go back?" he quizzed, playing devil's advocate.

I met his eye then, with raised eyebrows. "Come on, how exactly would that play out?"

"Some creature, say a small fluffy rabbit—" I rolled my eyes at the reference to a virtual training mission I failed by a very small margin when I was bested by a mob of the aforementioned demons, "–manages to incapacitate you, leaving you unable to walk. What do you do?"

"If I fall to any more of those things, I deserve whatever's coming to me," I laughed self-pityingly. "Nah, but I'll be fine. I think it's sweet that you care, though!" My grin was met with the slightest narrowing of his eyes.

"Just trying to figure out the frequency with which I'll be seeing you in the coming weeks," he sassed back with his eyes on the ceiling, quick as a whip with his retort, as he always was.

"Counting down the days 'til next we speak?" I teased, grin too wide to hold for long but I held it.

There was a red blur of movement then, and suddenly he was bearing down on me, gloved hands either side of my head lowering him down and too close tooclose— "Yes," he answered simply, though his voice was anything but, deliberate, low and rumbling, coming straight from his chest.

Stunned to immobility, I lay there with wide eyes, catching flies.

He stopped lowering himself, and smirked, drawing my gaze - as if I wasn't already watching his lips like a hawk in the moments previous. "Don't dish out what you can't take," he chided smugly.

Finding my voice (though it didn't sound much like my voice, all weak and squeaky), I pretended I was brave and retorted, "I can take it." A statement, but my rising inflection suggested a question. As if there was any certainty in the first place…

"Oh, can you?" the redhead inquired, settling himself on his elbows and smirking down at me, eyes narrowed in a challenge.

After some deliberation, I made my decision, and chickened out with a "Nope." He chuckled, and took pity on me, rolling to settle at my side once again. Feeling antsy and suitably flustered, I decided I had spent enough time in the SOLDIER's company, and scrambled to my feet. "Gonna head off here, I think," I bid farewell, extremely awkwardly as I was sure this was the first time I had done so, and turned my back on him to walk away.

"Don't let the empty white nothing hit you on your way out."