AN:

This fanfiction is:

based on the original game only (for the most part).

written in the first person, with alternating pov characters.

eventually Aeris x Sephiroth.

In retrospect what transpired that night was coincidental beyond measure, a lightning strike event. An apt metaphor since what ensued was indeed the earthing of an immense and dangerous energy. I was just the unfortunate conduit.

Gast

It had been already dark when I reached town. I made my way to the Shinra mansion almost directly, spending as little time as possible divesting myself of my belongings at the inn. I had been lit up by that kind of anxious energy wherein fear and anticipation whirl together inseparably, increasing one's haste.

I announced myself at the gate, as directed, providing the designated pseudonym and description of myself as an expected acquaintance of The General. In answer I'd been promptly admitted by the somewhat fatigued guards. On the stairs I was intercepted by a trainee, and after performing that same rehearsal, it was here that the still calm of the evening first gave it's indication that something was amiss.

"He's in the basement library."

The young man removes his helmet. He sounds off, somehow unnerved. "He said he wanted to be alone, except for if... you showed up." He peers at me, curious and confused. He appears very young, an effect amplified by the lightness of his hair. "The library, it's—he said you'd know where it is."

My anxious energy receives a sudden inflow of leaden dread.

I recall the general's last correspondence, a cryptogram, as per our usual.

—I have the files that you asked for. The next mission that takes me out of Midgar is in a fort night, the mountain town Nibelheim on the western continent. Meet me there.—

Naturally, I'd had my reservations about the requested venue. However, I'd not been expecting to begin our re-acquaintance in a situation quite like this.

This is almost certainly a terrible idea. What would I say—could I say? Is it coincidence, or has he known all along? Has he lain a trap for me?

...Does it even matter? What options do I have? He wanted to meet to get his own answers, this was always going to be an information exchange of sorts.

For a long moment I consider retreating... back to the inn? And then what? This is my responsibility, whatever it is to be, if I'm ever to find out what has happened to Ifalna... to Aeris.

I manage to find the secret entrance without too much trouble, even after all these years. The narrow, winding stairs open up before me, a precarious prospect as I begin my decent.

I find myself hesitating at the library entrance, somehow repelled by it. It's surreal to return to a place I'd so thoroughly compartmentalised.

An eerie quiet submerges me as I enter, along with the dust and musty smells of disuse. Countless piles of books lay strewn about—a pattern betraying recent and rapid consumption of their long dormant contents. I remember enough of the precocious child I helped raise to intuit the obvious culprit by more than mere circumstance.

At the very end of the book strewn trail, behind yet more files stacked high upon the library's main work desk, the sight of 'The Great General Sephiroth' gives me pause.

Somehow I'd still been picturing that young boy, bright eyed, curious, filled with what I'd once perceived as potential.

I had been so full of zeal, so devoid of caution...

This man, General Sephiroth, is an adjustment, and as my mind is making it, this new yet familiar person begins to raise his head. The Mako glow of his eyes is so concentrated that they're more of an aberrant green than the turquoise I remember. As they fix upon me their affectation is inscrutable.

I'm suddenly all the more keenly aware of the nature of the situation I've entered into.

"General—"

He brings up a gloved hand as if signalling for my silence, with the other he pinches the bridge of his nose with two long fingers. He chuckles, the sound rising in volume as he stands, gesturing around him.

"What a mess." He shakes his head smiling with a strange mirthlessness. I cannot help my eyes flashing towards the desk once again as I notice the longest sword I've ever seen has also been placed across its surface.

Who has that young boy become? Certainly someone with power. More power than even his presence would suggest. Although, in spite of this fact it still feels incongruous and unsettling to have to look upwards at him.

It had been the younger Mr Holzoff—the man from Icicle Inn who had cared for me both in the duration and aftermath of my coma—that taught me of how long I had been dead to the world. He relayed to me of all the ways in which it had changed in my absence, his recounting of the monumental war with Wutai is where I'd first discovered what had become of this unfortunate offspring of the Shinra science division. The great General, not just any war hero, for his deeds he had acquired a reputation that was almost mystical. It should not have come as a surprise. He could not have helped Shinra to discover any promised land. So they found a better use for him, one more suited to his innate talents.

Yet, the news had disturbed me. During the whirl wind of events that had distanced me from Shinra—from my pilgrimage to discover the true nature of Jenova, to meeting Ifalna—there had always been some obscured burden lurking in the periphery of my conscience. The question of just what I had done, of what he would become.

As soon as I had been well enough, I'd made the long journey to Cosmo Canyon. Several of the scholars there were good friends of mine and I'd pleaded for the help of Bugenhagen. I had no contacts at Shinra that I could still use, no one to whom I could appeal in order to help me find out what had become of Ifalna. It had been my old friend Bughe who made the suggestion that led me to where I now stand. He'd always had a rather unorthodox manner of thinking.

Years past Bughe had been the one to hear my confessions and console with me about the Jenova project. Come to think of it, he was perhaps the only one I had so completely confided in about Sephiroth, even with Ifalna... But, once the catharsis had settled my guilt I had packaged it away in some tiny box at the back of my mind. Leave it to Bughe to have reached in and pulled it right back out with zero pretence or ceremony, as if it were some potential solution.

—"What about that famous General—Sephiroth. You were close, right?"—

But, perhaps, he was right. My best, maybe only, chance to save my family—if they are even still alive—the only one I can think of who can help me, is this man—this man whom—

"I can't believe it's you." the general begins, and his cool tone is actually tinged with some sentiment as he continues "What a strange thing, for us to meet again... now... in this place." He shakes his head and meets my eyes. "It is... good to see you Professor Gast. I thought you were dead."

"It is," I flounder for a moment, "these are, unusual circumstances to be sure, I'd hoped that—"

The general pinches the bridge of his nose again, shaking his head in disbelief. "I can't believe it's you," he repeats, interjecting. He tilts his head towards the ceiling as if staring straight through it. "Why?" he asks quietly after a moment's pause. "Professor Gast, why didn't you tell me... ?"

I take a long, shallow, breath.

"It was Shinra who miss-reported my death... they didn't know I was still alive... It's probably why I've been able to stay as such." I pause, unsure of how to continue. Our correspondence through cryptograms has been brief and cagey by necessity.

"I left Shinra," I hesitate yet again. He is still watching me, listening expectantly. The view fills me with a kind of vertigo.

The 'Great General'... those files... that sword... the boy...

"I left because," I listen to my own voice with remote awareness, noting with faint wonder how my mouth continues to move despite myself, "I made a discovery, one not recorded here in this library, a discovery that called all of my research into question. So I left. I left to learn more, to... I met someone," I ramble on, chuckling unnaturally, "She was an Ancient—a Cetra. She helped me understand... we had a daughter— "

"The Ancients from the files you requested," The General interrupts, thoughtful. "That's why you wanted them." It's a statement, but I nod warily in affirmation just the same.

"They are... my family. Seventeen years ago, Shinra—Shinra abducted them. That was when... I was as good as dead, in an indefinite coma. It was only several months ago that I regained my senses. I am still struggling to catch up. It seems..." My head shakes.

The general had sat back down as he listened to me. He watches me closely, the absolute stillness of his focus striking me as troubled.

"What discovery?" His manner is terse, and I feel sure that there's something behind his reticence. Is he exasperated? confused? Angry? Whatever it is, it's bound to have consequences if I don't tread carefully, and what I must tell him—what I can see no way out of confessing—I don't know what-how to answer him. But I'm cornered.

I've cornered myself.

My gaze meets the floor. "The discovery... it was of what we'd—regarding you." I wince.

Silence answers my botched confession, After a brief moments pause an icy chuckle reaches my ears. "And what, exactly, is it that you have done? Regarding me."

I force myself to look up, not meeting his eyes. I look instead about the room, gesturing to the many piles of books.

"You must know... some of it already, we were trying to recreate a Cetra. You were our greatest success. We used, what we thought, were Cetra cells, we injected them directly at the embryonic stage. Once you were born it seemed obvious that we had succeeded. You were... you were... special." I shake my head forming a strained and involuntary smile.

Cryptograms had been one of the later things I'd taught him, in the spirit of mischief, I'd coded a sixth birthday card for him. He was always so eager for lessons, so easily bored. I thought he might enjoy it. And, I had indeed laughed, if not in the way I'd expected, when he returned it to me solved that afternoon, a look of exhilaration in his eyes.

From then on it had become a favourite game of ours, ascending in complexity with every incarnation. I recall one of our favourite forms of encryption was to use keywords referencing our favourite books—recommended reading with the promise of a secret message.

"You were so bright," I hear myself propel into another ramble, "You learnt everything like it was downstream and natural." I pull the slightly crumpled cryptogram from my pocket reflexively. "How could you not be Cetra come again, I thought, well." Quite accidentally, I meet his eyes—and wince again.

I shouldn't have spoken in such a way! I can't put my finger on it. His face remains blank and yet... My reckless enthusiasm really is my worst quality, whatever Ifalna used to say...

"But... Jenova, it... wasn't what we'd thought. It wasn't what we thought at all." My voice is quiet, winded of it's nostalgia. I hadn't completely intended to speak again, it's as if his expression compelled it from me.

The General is very still, he doesn't seemingly react at all until, slowly he stands, turning to walk towards one of the bookshelves. He shakes his head. " You knew... You always knew." His voice is quiet and there is another long pause before he adds "I don't understand," in the same flat yet somehow intimidating tone.

A peculiarly dreadful feeling settles through me. He must be still coming to terms with realising that he may have never been fully human, what I am telling him... it's worse...

"I knew," I affirm quietly. "But what I 'knew' was wrong. When I fled Shinra it was because I discovered that Jenova is not Cetra, it's something else..."

"So, you left." He pauses, "You left, when you discovered you're creation was...?"

"I wasn't sure of what I'd found when I fled Shinra. I needed to verify. I needed... time—time to understand." Another silence follows.

I startle when he clasps the side of his face and his shoulders begin to shake. The shaking reveals itself as silent laughter as he turns to face me. His eyes are alight as he strides forward arms spread.

"A monster," he proclaims with poisoned calm.

He resumes his seat, staring off into his own thoughts. "And of your making, Professor." He's shaking his head again and his tone has become one more akin to saddened disbelief. He stands again, as if agitated, beginning to pace. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You were six... How would it have affected you? And... I wasn't sure..." My voice sounds distant.

He sits, and shakes his head. "You could have." He laughs again, a small unhappy sound. "I could have understood, had you remained—" Our gazes hold for half a second, and I'm flooded by sentiments I would rather not examine.

He stands. "You said yourself, that learning comes naturally to me."

"I was unsure... I was afraid that..."

"You were weak," he asserts, and despite the natural authority of his voice I nevertheless pick up on the reluctance and disbelief of his tone. It's almost unnerving that I can still perceive the hurt motivating them despite how the years should have severed us.

He stands and begins pacing again.

"I am here now," I hear myself say.

He stops. Turning, walking towards the desk. His eyes don't seem to need to look to find what he seeks there. He holds two files before him.

Ifalna and Aeris...

"Do you really think Shinra would have let me tell you anything—let alone take you away!?"

He sits, placing the files back on the desk, and he shrugs. "Certainly not." I know he feels the point is too obvious to labour. "I need to think," he says. Is he dismissing me? The files seem placed in such a way as to give me leave to take them if I so wish.

What is he going to do? I fear for him—fear him. What will he do? It's been nineteen years. I do not know this General. The Sephiroth I knew was a child, and I am no longer his authority figure—more to the point—I know too much of Crisis. I know what it could do to the Cetra, humans cannot be immune. "Perhaps there could have been a way." I begin again, I shake my head doubtfully. "Perhaps..."

He doesn't look up. "I was not your responsibility."

This is all because of my own weakness, of my poor judgement, in that, he is correct. When I began to suspect what Jenova really was, I ran away. Not just away from the implosion of the perception I'd had of my life's work, of myself, but from him, from my helplessness to do anything for him. True or not, I abandoned a child to that which I could not face myself.

"You're wrong, Sephiroth."

He looks up, I think that he must be reacting to the decades old sound of his name in my voice, I've said it so quietly.

"Jenova, it was—it was my project. And you were only a child. You were" I reach for an appropriate word, "important." My voice has that subtle quaver it sometimes gets when my courage doesn't quite equal my impulsivity. "I've... let you down." I state, shaking my head at my poor articulation and meeting his eyes. I can see, quite clearly, that he is unmoved.

It's too little. It's too much.

Striding forward, I fumble through my pockets for my travel lighter. Snatching the files off the desk, I flick the lid.

I watch in horror as the flame licks at the bottom corners of the manila folders.

Why... ?

It's wrong. I am burning the only information I'm likely to get—about my wife, about my daughter, my family. What if they are suffering wherever they are? What if they need me right now? What if they are still alive but they die because of the delay this causes?

Yet, how can I expect him to trust me to be sincere based on nothing? How can I trust myself? In the madness of the moment my memory recreates Ifalna's voice so vividly that I think I might be partially hallucinating—

—Sacrifice will always be necessary... It only gets worse the longer it's postponed.—

She was always better at seeing the bigger picture than me. Even if the thoughts are entirely my own—I knew her, well enough to love her.

I move my hands around the folders' edges as the flames increase their fervour, holding them upright as they build to a blaze. I barely notice Sephiroth has stood, not until he's taken them from my hands. He flicks his wrist until the flames disappear amongst a cloying cloud of smoke and spark. Once it clears, less than half of the files remain.

"You'll burn yourself."

His back is facing me, his voice is a distant, subtle staccato.

I've surprised him.

He's far more precarious than I'd imagined. Occasionally I glimpse it—His rage.

It's an imperious rage, total, a rage that only someone like him could ever produce—someone apart, someone who has no real connections to humanity, nor any empathy. To possess empathy you must first have walked the same path as others, or at least a similar path. How else can you truly know how they feel?

Sephiroth's path has been all too unique.

I thank Ifalna for lending me her intuition in my moment of panic. I've since had the horrifying realisation that I was perhaps the closest thing Sephiroth has ever had to a normal relationship.

Do not mistake me, his loneliness is not my concern. I'm not even sure such a thing has even occurred to him as being of any importance—I can't imagine that he is a man that has ever been in want for attention.

It's just that he's so... untethered. A man on a kite. His line, most likely always an unsecured thing, has been dangerously close to severed by the betrayal that he has uncovered. I'm doing my best to bring him back down to earth. His potential—I know it all too well, I've always felt it to be somehow... unlimited.

"You are still human," I insist.

"Am I?" he responds with light incredulity.

"You have a human Mother and Father."

"Hm."

He is sitting, leaning back in the old study chair, gazing at the ceiling lost in thought. I've long since pulled over a stool to sit upon, the night has already been long, and it shows no sign of conclusion. "My 'Father'." He tilts his head towards me, confiding with a small scoff "He thinks it's a secret." Resuming his wistful skyward gaze he elaborates. "I've known for a long time. He makes so many artless insinuations you'd think he'd realise that he'd given the game away decades ago. I think his ego gets in the way of his reasoning, as it does in all his endeavours." He sounds bored, his contempt complete. "I have never seen nor felt any affinity with him. Perhaps it finally makes sense now, his influence has been overpowered by the genotypic dominance of my 'Mother'."

"Jenova is not your Mother."

He casts a wry look at me, "Oh? I seem to recall—"

"I was," I interrupt, "I was naïve. Your birth Mother—It is not a happy story. Once I'd realised what Hojo had told you, I though it far better not to confuse you, that you continue to associate Jenova as a Mother. I thought she—it—was something quite different at the time."

"Professor Gast, you surprise me, surely something is true, or it is not true. I had not recalled you to be this... unscientific. I suppose you are referring to some human surrogate? I assure you, such an inference had already occurred to me—The alternative being that frozen remains are capable of giving birth? What of it? Why should I consider her to be any more of a mother than I consider Hojo a father?"

"Empiricism and interpretation are very different things," I hastily retort. I'm experiencing something of a déjà vu. Perhaps, he is still very much the same boy I'd known. It both is and isn't the same piercing gaze, straight to the vulnerability of any matter. He'd been much more trusting back then, yet similarly, annoyingly, sharp. I smile sadly. "Your human mother provided both egg and womb. Can you truly, empirically, rule her out as your mother, by definition?"

"You must have done tests."

I pause, considering it all. What a mess indeed.

I exhale the shallow breath I hadn't been conscious of holding, looking upwards, hoping it will help me to collate my thoughts. The ceiling is loftier here at the study end of the library, but still low and rocky enough to remind me that we are quite far under the ground. I slip into a purely scientific mode of thinking like a comfortable, well-worn glove.

"Since the treatments began at the embryonic stage they acted on your DNA from the earliest moments of your development. In truth, the influence of all three should be inseparably interwoven. All told, your parentage would defy conventional definition. Which I suppose is where I found my room for interpretation."

"And where you find it again now?" Exasperation bleeds through his words, "I always knew I was different, special in some way..."

I catch his gaze again, increasingly haunted by the mirage of that child.

I shake my head. "...You are. You are special. The experiment—they've tried to replicate it, sometimes with the same methodology, sometimes not. How many times, I could not say, no doubt Hojo has not been idle these past nineteen years. But, Jenova..."

He laughs, sharp and abrupt, cutting me off. "Yes," he begins with lingering amusement, "Jenova, tell me, Professor Gast, about my mother." He's mocking me, mocking the lies I've told him.

He's almost like a teenager, I think to myself, despite his aloof calm. An extremely dangerous, justifiably angry, chronically repressed teenager. His anger keeps bursting forth as amusement, as if having such strong feelings were absurd to him. Are we picking up where we left off perhaps? I suppose I should be grateful he isn't lashing out in a more straightforward manner.

I resolve to counter by remaining as calm as I can manage.

"What more do you wish to know." My voice sounds heavier than I expected.

Sephiroth regards me thoughtfully, eyes still burning. Brightly disconcerting.

"You don't know." He states, leaning back. "You don't know what it is."

I shake my head "It is true that much of that knowledge has been lost with the Ancients. But... we know that is sustains itself as a parasite." My voice is softer, frailer than I would like as I try to balance my own fears with the need to impress upon him the danger that lurks within. "It travels, from planet to planet, consuming, until nothing remains."

"Are you sure, professor?" He tilts his head, his words heavy with calm intent, "Perhaps it's all just a matter of interpretation." He raises a hand, covering his face with it. Long fingers tangle into his strange, silvery hair. He's laughs again, and the sound is more chilling, full of callous absurdity. "Who's to say?" he continues, "I'm not sure it will take humans as long as a millennia before you need to look for another planet. Are you parasites too?"

I open my mouth, but I have no response for him. I need time to think—

"The Ancients," he continues, quietly now. I'm not sure if he's speaking more to me, or to himself. "No, the Cetra, They were the only true stewards of this planet. As for the rest..." His shoulders shake with silent laughter. He looks at me, his composure turning solemn. Somehow his eyes communicate a contradictory mix of apology and anger. "But they're gone now."

My breath catches. What does he mean? Surely not—

The anger in his eyes cools as he regards me. "I am sorry for you, professor. Read your files, what's left of them."

I don't move, paralyzed in a moment of uncertainty, but I do not believe this a trick, nor a test, so I reach for what might remain of my family.

Deceased.

The word is like a full stop—an end.

Killed trying to escape.

Ifalna.

Two years? Together for two years. Two years next to seven spent as Hojo's specimen.

While I just slept.

I knew it was a potentiality. I knew. Yet...

The file is thick and there are many more pages, but they're the remains of graphs, measurements, reports and theses—de-personing, invasive and lifeless.

...At least...

At least you had Aeris—At least you got to see our daughter grow... did you?

There is a second file.

I notice the trembling of my reaching hands with dreamlike curiosity, the way it travels all the way up my arms as if the numbing sensation of shock has caused my nervous system to temporarily malfunction.

The file—It's so much thinner... I am reluctant to look. Will I find an ending there too?

Her green eyes peer up at me, alive, despite the clinical nature of the photograph with its washed out colours. A tiny square prison containing the ghost of the daughter I never knew. She looks like her mother, and maybe, if I squint, I can be convinced I see myself in her look too.

I hear myself inhale slowly as I turn my eyes to the text. The cursory details and measurements let me know how she's been poked and processed, although it seems, not to the same extent as her mother... but the words end there. The fire has taken the rest.

I burned my little girl.

My hand clenches, my short nails digging into my palm.

What was I thinking.

That day I ran from Shinra, I'd unknowingly torn myself in half. My duty to face up to the consequences of my experiments, in direct competition with protecting the new family awaiting me. How naïve I'd been to think I could do both. Those two heady years I'd never once thought that it wouldn't all work out—that my research with Ifalna would somehow undo what I'd done to Sephiroth without ever having to face him. Now look where it's gotten me. Here. At his mercy. Unable to even find my own daughter alone. He must have read the files, he must know what was in the part I burnt...

Could I even dare to hope?

I look across the desk, the question, no doubt, writ large in my expression. His own—I can only think to describe it as one of fascination.

My fear and wariness have been evaporated by the strength of my grief, and in that moment, I want to shake him.

"Missing," he answers after a moment, cocking his head in open curiosity. "Although, that file was limited, I suspect there might be more pertinent information in the records of the Turks. Such affairs are usually their department." He shrugs. "But if such files exist, I'm afraid I haven't looked at them."

He pinches the bridge of his nose, introspecting. "I wasn't sure... why you'd disappeared—why you'd left Shinra, why you'd even wanted this information. I admit I was surprised that the Ancients hadn't died out long before now. I too was curious. Yet," he laughs, "it's absurd. I didn't want to break any more protocol than I already had. I'm not even sure why I cared. I was just performing my role. How funny," he shakes his head, smiling coldly, "that I could care about such a thing. I've always thought humanity to be unfortunate in certain aspects, but... I guess I believed that Shinra was it's apex. It's hubris excusable as the best of the worst. I was a fool, worse than a fool—the perfect soldier—used, voluntarily. Now?—How odd," he chuckles, "I wouldn't be sorry if it were all to just burn to the ground." He looks at me, his eyes a little wider than usual, a little more alight. "What do you think professor?"

The sound that escapes me is bitter—grief, fear, frustration, anger, all churned up and spat back out as confused non-laughter. My wife: dead. My daughter: probably dead. My legacy: madness. I feel suddenly exhausted as I attempt a response. "Shinra is—has done... some terrible things. Humanity, humanity is... struggling. Struggling between the poles of the good and the bad... I don't know."

"And me?" he asks, the light in his eyes unnervingly. "What am I?" I have no answer for him. So instead I offer an uneasy, apologetic laugh.

"Sephiroth," I begin. Perhaps my conceptions of him—boy and General—have been slowly unifying. As is so often the case, the more things change the more they stay the same, that and the inebriated courage of my grief has not yet worn off. "You are one of a kind. Unprecedented and impossible to recreate. Jenova has influenced the development of your DNA, but that DNA itself is human. You have a unique position, I think... I think what you do with it can only be of your own creation."

He watches me quietly for a long moment before turning away, a curious expression moving quickly through his features before disappearing abruptly into cool composure.

"I do not have the answers I would wish to," I resume in hollow apology. "I was trying to find some—I can show you." I stand, restlessly. "It's still there. I was amassing research, on Jenova, on the Cetra, on the planet." I begin pacing. "There is still work I need to do... things I need to know. My work, it is... likely to be very important, now that Ifalna—" I pause, "I owe her." I pause again, quieting. "You could be part of it... I mean to say," pause, "neither of us may be Cetra, but we can find out if we can steward the planet through our own choices. You could accompany me..."

He returns his gaze to mine, eyes flickering. But... he nods, his small answering smile is thoughtful if veiled. 'I will. There is much I ...must learn."

I can see turmoil in him and, in a strange manner, it's comforting, very... human. I exhale a quiet shaky breath I didn't know I was holding. I will help him find his answers. Perhaps we can each hope to find find our own approximation of peace...

"Then... we should leave soon," I begin. "Do you have much you need to bring? It would be best if we could avoid alerting the soldiers—" He's already standing, he's picked up that impossibly long sword from the desk, walking past me towards the exit. I flinch away from the sight reflexively. "Sephiroth...?"

He glances back at me, the corners of his mouth indistinctly upturned as if in response to some private joke.

"I'm going to see my Mother."

My mouth falls open, but he raises a gloved hand again before I speak.

"There's no need to concern yourself professor. You can wait here, I will return shortly." His look solidifies into something serious. Definite. "I won't leave it here..." He turns, and is gone, before I even get the chance to process what is happening.

I continue to stare down the corridor long after his retreating figure has disappeared, contemplating what I have done.

I pace the library. I sit, I think, stand, pace some more... It's been hours. I suppose that's not unexpected. The reactor is far up in the mountains. Still, I worry. What on earth is happening?

Whatever am I to do about Aeris? Sephiroth is too unpredictable. If—even if—she's—even if we could find her, would she be safer with us? I don't think... Do I even really want him to... Yet, I'm certain to be more able to find her with his assistance than without... It wouldn't matter if it were just me but... I remove my glasses to rub at the pressure between my eyes.

Many more hours, hours fraught with anxiety, pass before he reappears.

I'm far from reassured by the subtle widening of his eyes, nor the unintelligible sentiment dancing within them, nor by the damp sheen on his skin and... no doubt least of all by the severed alien head of the creature I'd so successfully mentally distanced myself from—until now, as a mere intellectual construct.

He speaks hastily, collecting a few of the papers and books from the table, "The soldiers are out of the way. We should leave before the town wakes, gather your things and meet me at the gate."

The dark of the night gives way to the clandestine gloom of early morning light by the time we make our way out of town. The soldiers are nowhere to be seen just like he said, and I hope, furtively, that they are distracted or unconscious somewhere, be it in sleep or otherwise, and not...

Looking back towards the reactor, the greenish rays streaming through the mountains frame a patch of animated, reddish incandescence.

Aeris.

I hope... pray, that you are alive—that you are ok... wherever you are.