Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

Aerith is eight, and for the first time Elmyra – whom she still can't quite call mother – lets her out alone. "No further than the Fifth Sector, dear," Elmyra says before she goes. "And not too far away – be sure to stay within shouting distance!"

She doesn't. She's been cooped indoors and trapped under watchful gazes for too long and she wants away for a while. Away from the new mother whose existence keeps reminding her that the old one – the real one – is gone. Away from the new home that's nice and cosy and nothing like the laboratories she's used to. Away from the endless trickling of water outside where the sewage system breaks and water forms a pool that's half rainwater and half sewage. Away from the life that doesn't feel like hers.

Aerith is eight, and the Sector Five Slums are huge and dirty, full of piles of rubble and metal and broken glass. It's more than a little girl can even hope to explore and she's scared of how high the piles are, so she doesn't approach them. She stands on the edges and stares in wonder at the bent steel rods and pieces of broken furniture, the piles upon piles of discarded tires and sheets of metal that might've made the body of a car, once. There are concrete rings and shapeless pieces of asphalt and what looks like a mountain of street signs. She only recognizes a little of what she sees – there is a piece of a wall where someone had painted the image of something… green. She has no idea what it is, but it's pretty.

For a while she forgets, tracing the green thing with her fingers and eyes and wondering why it splintered so and what its purpose was. It's still hard, sometimes, not to expect everything to have a scientific purpose, or a place in a laboratory. The first time she had seen a television in Elmyra's living room, she had stared at it hard, waiting for the test results or live video feed of a cell to pop up. Of course it didn't, but the TV still makes her uneasy.

Sometimes Elmyra makes tea on a tray, cups upon double plates, and the fine dishware clatters like glass, and Aerith is, for a moment, back in the lab where they are preparing the test tubes for drawing blood.

Aerith wanders around the junk piles until she finds something that isn't junk – it has a shape and a clear purpose and windows and a wooden door. It doesn't look like a house though – and nothing like the ShinRa HQ. A little like Elmyra's house, but not much. This one looks imposing rather than cosy, sturdy rather than nondescript – somehow elegant. And out of place, with the pile of junk beside it.

She hesitates for a moment – because what if it is someone's house? Elmyra had told her to avoid people, "Especially the ones in dark blue suits, sweetie. You run away from those as fast as you can, alright?" And Aerith isn't stupid – she knows people are still looking for her, knows that if those people had their way, she'd still be in the laboratory.

But the door to this building is open and the air inside looks… colourful, somehow. So, carefully and cautiously and stopping every other step to listen, she goes inside.

It's not a house – at least not like any sort of house where anyone could live. It’s all a single, enormous room rather than having several like Elmyra's house, and the floor is broken. There is what looks like collapsed wooden benches all across the space – and she only knows it’s wood because Elmyra had shown her. There's a hole in the ceiling above and the front of the colossal space that is the interior of this house is bathed by light that might, who knows, come from above plate.

Aerith likes the windows. They're colourful, with pictures done in red, green, white and blue in them. She's never seen windows like that before.

It’s quiet and her steps echo in the large space as she explores it – the ruined benches, the pieces of broken wood, everywhere. The floor is wood too, where it's not broken and it feels solid and sturdy beneath her sandals. She bounces a few times, and listens to the echoing clatter of her heels against the wood.

She walks to the hole in the floor, wondering what could've made it. Then she sees the piles of rock and strangely shaped ceramic plates and looks up – it's under the exact spot where the ceiling had broken. It had, judging by the looks of it, collapsed right down, through the floors above and to the floor below, making the hole.

For some reason, the whole thing seems sad to her. It's such a grand, beautiful house. Elmyra had told her that the house she was living in used to be someone else's, but it had been abandoned and left to ruin, so Elmyra and her husband had fixed it up for themselves. In the Slums, if it isn't attended to by someone else, you can just take it, it seemed.

It makes no sense to Aerith that this house would be left empty – and for as long as it looks like it has. There's a layer of stone dust everywhere, and no one has been here in years it seems. Why not? It's such a big, nice house, with beautiful windows. You could fit a lot of people in here, and it doesn't look like it would take too much effort to fix it.

She's about to head up the stairs, to see what's on the wooden floors above, when a shadow passes over the beam of light coming from the hole in the ceiling. Then, before she can do more than blink, something comes down hard, crashing into the pile of stone and ceramic and wood in the hole in the floor. The impact is so hard that the windows strain and a bit of stone dust trickles down from the ceiling and for a moment Aerith's heart is in her throat.

There is something white lying in front of her, on the rubble in the hole in the floor. White and fluffy and strange – like several white some things in a row. One of the white things extruding flops over limply and then there is silence. The thing, whatever it is, doesn't move.

Well, it might explain why the house is empty and why there is a hole in the ceiling and the floor – apparently, things fell down through them often.

Nervous but too curious to leave it be, Aerith steps closer and crouches at the very edge of the floor, trying to see what the white thing is. It's so fluffy, it looks so soft. Maybe it's some sort of decoration that someone threw away? Like the pillows Elmyra had, or the paintings and clothes she had hung on the walls to "brighten the place up."

After a moment, Aerith drops down into the hole on the floor and very tentatively reaches out to touch the closest white thing. It is soft, but sort of stiff too. Odd, covered in spines that have fluff, and for a moment she thinks about the monsters she had seen sometimes in the laboratories. None of them had been particularly fluffy, but a lot of them had had spikes and spines.

Maybe it's a monster – it's warm, under the cover of spiky fluff, so it might be living. Or it might've been living, before it crashed down, and the fall killed it. Frowning a little, Aerith crouches down to see under the white thing, hoping it isn't dead. She has seen so many monsters die, and she would rather see one live for once.

After a few futile attempts to see past the white thing, she finally pushes her hands under it and then tries to push it up and out of the way. It isn't as heavy as she had thought and she can lift it, just enough to see a shoulder, and an arm, and a hand – all very human. Of course there are monsters with human bits – she has seen those die and she has seen them being made too. Maybe this is something ShinRa made? Had it escaped, or had they discarded it, the way Midgar discarded the other stuff it didn't need, down into the Slums?

It takes work, but Aerith gets the white things out of the way, making the human bits more visible. There is more human in the monster than she had feared. He, because it is a man, is all human except for the back where the white things stick out, three of them in total, all of them on the left side of his spine.

He is blond with hair as spiky as the white things on his back. He is also completely naked. There are bruises and scratches on his front where he hit the pile of rocks, but aside from that he doesn't look hurt. He doesn't look dead.

After a moment of consideration, Aerith reaches for his wrist and holds it up, searching for a pulse. She finds it quicker than she had feared and it's stronger than she dared to hope. Strong and steady, thumping at her fingers in defiance of the fall he had taken.

"Okay," Aerith says, looking at the man – or the monster, it's hard to say. He is alive, and lying on the rubble of stone which doesn't look comfortable at all. Aerith doesn't think she can move him, though. He's big and muscular like some of the men she had seen in the laboratories, coming in for their Mako treatments. And even if she could move him, she doesn't know what she'd do with him afterwards. There is nothing but broken wood and stone here – no bed to put him in, no blanket to pull over him. No clothes to give him.

After a moment of looking at the man, she stands up. Elmyra, for all that Aerith can't call her Mom, is smart. She'd know what to do.

So she makes her way back through the Sector Five Slums and to the house, where Elmyra is nervously sweeping the front of the house. The woman visibly relaxes at the sight of Aerith, and for a moment she feels guilty, for going so far. It's only a moment, though.

"There you are. I was starting to worry," Elmyra says, reaching out her hand and running it through Aerith's hair. "Are you alright? Did you have fun?"

Fun is something new that Aerith doesn't have that much experience with – something her mother had tried to give her in the cells and failed, something Elmyra has tried to introduce since then. She knows now what it is, but she doesn't quite yet know the difference between having fun and just being left alone. They seem the same.

But she still nods, because it's what Elmyra wants. "Yes. I found a man," Aerith says, looking up at her. "In a big house with colourful windows. He has white things on his back and he's naked and I think we should help him."

"White things – naked?!" Elmyra asks, eyes widening. "Sweetie…"

"He's unconscious," Aerith says, not understanding the worry on the woman's face. "And I think he's hurt. Can we help him?"

Elmyra hesitates, looking at her before making a face Aerith has come to know – the face that means Elmyra doesn't like something Aerith is saying, but won't tell her so. "A big house with colourful windows – do you mean the Church?" she asks. "No one usually goes there."

"He wasn't there when I went in. He fell from the sky," Aerith helpfully says, shrugging. "I think he might've been unconscious even before he fell, though he fell really hard." She hesitates. "Can't we help him?" she asks then, because sometimes people do and often they don't and she had thought that since Elmyra had helped her, they might… but maybe it was just a onetime thing. Lots of things are just one time things, she's found.

"Oh, well. He fell? Oh dear," Elmyra murmurs and hesitates. She looks at Aerith like she wants to tell her no, or maybe tell her to go inside, but then she sighs. She does that too, sometimes, and apparently it had something to do with the face Aerith makes, or her eyes. Whatever it is, it sometimes makes Elmyra compromise. "Alright, sweetie, we'll go have a look. But I need to get something from the house first. You wait here, alright?"

Aerith waits. Elmyra comes out a few minutes later, with some clothes in a basket and something in her pocket that she keeps her hand on at all times. Aerith can tell it's a gun by the shape it makes in the fabric of Elmyra's worn jacket, but she doesn't say anything. Elmyra likes to pretend that Aerith doesn't know about some things, so she pretends too.

Together, they head to the big house – the Church? – with Elmyra staying just half a step ahead of Aerith. They enter and the Church is the same – quiet and dusty with colourful air and a hole in the floor. And there, in that hole, lies the monster man, still unconscious, still naked.

"Oh my god," Elmyra whispers, her hand coming away from the gun in her pocket, and to her chest. The basket of clothing falls from her hand and while Aerith looks at her in confusion, Elmyra stares at the monster man in silent shock. Maybe she has never seen monsters before?

Then, swallowing, Elmyra makes a stuttering sound and clasps her hands together, just for a moment, fingers sliding into each other. Before Aerith can figure out what she's on about, what the purpose of the gesture is, Elmyra is moving forward, dropping down to the hole and approaching the man.

"Come here, sweetie. I need your help to lift him up," Elmyra says, pulling the man up brusquely but with an odd gentleness. "Mind his wings, sweetie. Lift them up so they don't snag on the floor's edge, alright?"

"Wings?" Aerith asks, confused. She's never heard such a word before.

"The white things on his back," Elmyra said, winding the man's limp arm around her shoulders and beginning to pull him up. "Lift them up a bit, honey, there's a good girl."

Aerith goes under the white things, the wings, and pushes them up with all her might. They're not heavy, but they're weird and large and flop about her like the biggest, warmest blanket ever. She has to adjust her grip several times to make sure they don't get trapped in the rocks or on the jagged edge of the broken floor, but in the end she manages.

Gently, Elmyra lays the man on his side on the floor, wings outstretched behind him. "He doesn't look badly hurt," she murmurs, running her hands over his shoulders and chest, pressing here and there, before examining the cuts on his face. "Just knocked out, I hope. Could you get the basket, sweetie?"

Aerith fetches the clothes and together they shimmy the man into trousers. With the wings, they don't bother with a shirt, and while Aerith eases socks onto the man's bare feet, Elmyra examines the wings.

"Why only one side?" she murmurs. "Angels ought to have a set…"

"What are angels?" Aerith asks.

Elmyra hesitates, looking around the Church and then smiling. "They're old stories, sweetie," she says, motioning Aerith to come closer. "About men and women, a special sort, who watch over people and guard them. In the stories, they have wings – like these," she says, motioning at the wings. "Just, in the stories they have a pair."

"Well. He has a pair and one extra," Aerith says and Elmyra laughs.

"I suppose he does, sweetie," she agrees. "But I meant one on each side, like arms. A set of wings."

Aerith nods seriously and for a moment they just watch the blond man breathe, his wings stretched out behind him, all three of them. The topmost one is the biggest, longer than the man is tall, much longer. The lower ones are both a bit smaller but not by much. It looks like a lot of wings and Aerith can't figure out the purpose of them. They're comfortable looking, sure, but they don't have anything sharp or useful to them. They don't look like the man can use them to attack someone and with the wings so soft they don't look like they could be used as armour either. Any blade sharp enough would cut right through.

"Are they for warmth?" she asks finally. "The wings?"

"No, honey, they're for flight," Elmyra says and looks at her, sad. "Do you know about birds?"

"I've… heard of them, maybe?" Aerith says, trying to think. Her mother had mentioned them once.

"Birds are little creatures – well, some of them are big, but most aren't. They have wings, instead of arms or paws, and they can fly with those wings, by flapping them against the air," Elmyra explains, making an odd gesture with both her hands, thumbs entwined and the rest of her fingers flapping. "Something like this. I will try and see if I can find some pictures for you later, about birds. Anyway, angels are supposed to be able to fly too. So that they can always come find you, when you're in trouble."

Aerith nods slowly, and looks at the man in a new light. "Do you think he was trying to help someone in trouble and failed and was knocked out and fell down?" she asks then, trying to imagine it. "He looks like he could fight, but why is he naked?"

Elmyra laughs again. "I don't know, sweetie," she says, squeezing Aerith's shoulder and then standing up. "We'll have to ask him, when he wakes up."

Aerith nods and then looks up at the woman. "What if he doesn't?" she asks.

"I'm sure he will. He doesn't look badly hurt. We'll just have to wait."

2.

In the end, they take the angel to the house. Elmyra is a little hesitant – because as much as the child she had once been wants to believe in angels and miracles and the stories her grandmother had told her in a hushed voice, she is more of a realist these days. Angels, she knows, aren't actually real. What are real are ShinRa and their science experiments, and the fact that humans aren't born with wings.

She knows the man is probably an escaped specimen, like Aerith was, like Ifalna had been. Specimens escaped ShinRa all the time and they always made for the Slums, like being under the plate was some sort of protection from ShinRa. It wasn't, not really, but who knows. It had worked for Aerith, so far. Maybe it would work for this man as well.

So she covers the wings as well as she can with the extra shirts she had brought and with Aerith making sure the wings stay hidden, Elmyra hoists the man's arm to her shoulders and they slowly and laboriously drag the man to the house. It's a nerve wrecking journey, the whole while waiting for someone to appear to apprehend them – apprehend the man, Aerith and maybe Elmyra too for aiding and abetting. But the Fifth Sector Slums are a quiet place and if anyone sees them, they don't show themselves.

In the end, they make it into the relatively safety of the house and take the man upstairs. The winged man barely fits the guest room bed, and Elmyra puts chairs beside the bed to make sure the wings don't hang out over the edge. Then she and Aerith clean the cuts and bruises the best they can, grateful that there aren't that many of them because there isn't that much in their first aid kit either.

For a moment, Elmyra considers trying to brush the feathers of his wings into order. They are a mess, sticking out with a few of the spines broken and it looks mildly painful. In the end, she refrains, not knowing if touching them would hurt more than leaving them be. Another thing to be left for later, for when the man wakes up – if he will.

She hopes he will. If he won't, well. He wouldn't be the first specimen she will have buried in the barren grounds of her little slice of the Slums.

"Come on, sweetie. Let's make something to eat," she says to Aerith who is curiously watching the man. Aerith nods, as ready as always to follow instructions and for a moment Elmyra hopes, wishes, that she could be like other children, that she'd hear the obstinate I don't wanna from her that she sometimes hears from the children running around Wall Market…

But Aerith was raised in a prison cell. She doesn't know how to be a child, not yet. Elmyra hopes she's making some progress with that but sometimes she wonders if the damage is already done, if the scars run too deeply – if Aerith will always remain a little stoic, a little expressionless, and always wary.

They make dinner – just a simple porridge, with a little bit of cinnamon for taste. It's not much, but Aerith eats it without complaint, a thoughtful look on her face. Once they're done eating, she asks slowly and thoughtfully, "What is a Church? It's a different sort of house. Is it like a laboratory, made for a specific purpose?"

Elmyra smiles at that – it's one of her better accomplishments, she thinks. Aerith would hardly speak in the beginning, but now she's asking questions – she's curious about things she doesn't know. It's a small victory, but Elmyra takes credit for it nonetheless.

"Before Midgar was built, there used to be a town here," Elmyra tells her. "It was a rather old fashioned town; small, quiet. The people who lived here, they had strange beliefs and faiths, and a religion – um. Do you know what a religion is?"

"Maybe? But it's probably not what I think," Aerith says thoughtfully. "They used to say that science is ShinRa's religion, but I don't think that's it."

"No, not quite. Faith and belief, in this case, is when you believe in things that might be hard to explain. Like spirits and gods and, well. Like angels. And religion is when a lot of people have the same belief and they share it knowingly, intentionally," Elmyra says. "Anyway, the people here had a religion, and the Church was their place of worship – where all the people who had the same religion and beliefs gathered. They'd gather and they'd… express their faith together."

"That sounds weird," Aerith admits, frowning.

"Maybe a little, by modern standards. There aren't any religions left, I don't think. But it was a great comfort to people, to believe in higher powers and in creators, in the idea that maybe life was by design and maybe the designer was still there, watching over them, making sure they'd be okay," the woman says thoughtfully. Her grandmother had still had that faith, had held onto it until she died. "And it was a comfort to know that there were people like you around you, with the same beliefs."

"I guess. But why did they gather?" Aerith asks. "Or was it like with the laboratories, and they gathered to plan experiments or talk about results?"

Elmyra laughs, trying not to make it sound too hysterical. "No, no, sweetie. They gathered just to gather. Or maybe it was because they thought that if they worshipped together, their gods would hear them better? It didn't have any goal in mind, they didn't quite plan it, they didn't try and get anything out of it. It was just… a way for them express themselves to their gods. It made them feel good, I think."

The little girl obviously doesn't understand, but she nods nonetheless. "And… an angel is a thing of faith?" she asks.

Elmyra frowns a bit at that, and glances up towards the stairs leading up to the second floor. "It was, yes. Angels were the guardians sent by the gods, to watch over people."

"I've never seen one before. Maybe they're just for humans, and not for Ancients," Aerith muses. "Have you seen one before?"

"No. No, I haven't, sweetie," Elmyra says and can't quite keep her voice from trembling because how sad, how terribly sad it is to hear Aerith say that? Like to be an Ancient is to be less than human – when it is so very much the opposite that's true? Yet another scar the so called care of ShinRa had left on the little girl – one she hoped dearly she could heal, and soon.

Not with lies, though. She knows better than that, so she won't say that there are angels out there for everyone, Ancients and humans both, that they're just hidden and invisible. "I don't think anyone has angels anymore," she says instead. "I don't think anyone ever had. It is just superstition. A nice, comfortable superstition, but one nonetheless."

Aerith looks at her a little strangely. "We do, now," she points out. "We have one upstairs."

"Yes, maybe, but he's not ours sweetie," Elmyra chuckles and stands up. "He's a guest, and if anyone is guarding anyone here, it's us guarding him, don't you think? Come on, let's do the dishes and then see how our guest is doing."

Their guest is still unconscious when they go to see him. And he remains unconscious through the day and into the night, never moving, not even batting an eyelash, just breathing. Elmyra sits vigil by his bedside for a little while, with Aerith asleep in her lap, but the man remains unconscious.

What do not remain are the wounds. The cuts are gone by morning, the bruises vanished like they were never there and when Elmyra wipes what remains of the blood on the man's skin, it reveals that not even the faintest scar remains. The man heals fast and she wonders… maybe he was badly injured, but the injuries healed out of sight, without them ever noticing them.

In the afternoon of the day after they found him, he wakes up – somewhat. Aerith comes pounding down the stairs where Elmyra is fixing some of her older dresses, the little girl almost leaping at her, saying, "His eyes are open and they glow!" – and the bottom of Elmyra's stomach drops.

They do glow. They're like tiny piece of the sky, stuffed into disks of intense blue, which shimmer when Aerith shades them with her hand. Elmyra just watches the glow for a while, uneasy, so very uneasy – because that's the trademark of the new SOLDIER class of ShinRa's army. She doesn't know why or how it happens, but SOLDIER eyes glow just like that. It all but proves that the man is a ShinRa escapee.

She steels herself, nonetheless, and steps forward. "Good morning," she says, drawing Aerith away, behind her, just in case. "You had us worried."

The man blinks and looks at her, but he says nothing. Elmyra waits for a moment and tries again. "Are you hungry?" she asks. "Or thirsty – Aerith, sweetie, could you get a glass of water for our guest?" but he doesn't react much at all, not even when Aerith dashes away and then back again. He drinks, but only when Elmyra helps him.

For all that the man's eyes glow, they are dull and a little sightless, the pupils a little too wide and a little too green for Elmyra's liking. Whatever swims in his veins and glows out of his eyes aside, he's not all there yet. His eyes track them, flicker in the direction of movement, but it's like he's working automatically and doesn't actually see what he's looking at. Or doesn't understand it.

He's pliant, though, and when Elmyra urges him up he stands, and he even walks down the stairs under his own power. The wings drag on the floor, their joints thumping against each stair, but he doesn't seem to register them at all. Aerith pulls out a chair and they sit him down, and when Elmyra puts a bowl in front of him and a spoon in his hand, he eats the soup almost robotically in steady motions.

"Elmyra?" Aerith asks, frowning a little. "What's wrong with him?"

"It's… taking him a little while to find his way back from wherever his mind's gone, sweetie," Elmyra says, watching the man's expressionless face closely. It's not faked, she decides – he really isn't all there yet. He's a handsome young man – he could almost be called beautiful – maybe in his twenties, with hair so blond it's almost golden. The lack of expression makes him look like a doll, or like a statue come to life. He has scars, though – one of them right on his stomach, not very large but very telling. Just a vertical little cut, just a little left of his navel. It has a twin on his back, just a little to the right of his spine.

He finishes the bowl of food and sets down the spoon and just sits there until Elmyra passes him a glass which he empties without pause. Elmyra and Aerith stare at him but he says and does nothing, just sits there, sightless and motionless, his wings hanging limply on the floor at his side, like a strange half cape he's not even aware of.

"Well," Elmyra murmurs. "I guess we'll be waiting a little longer, then."

They wash him that night, because for all that he's not hurt, he's not quite clean either. He looks too big and awkward in the bath tub, wings all over the place, but he doesn't complain and Aerith seems to enjoy the task of rubbing soap into the wings and then rinsing it out with about a hundred cups of water. Elmyra washes the human parts of him, making sure to keep the water just soapy enough that Aerith won't see too much.

Though, she probably already has, long ago.

The bathtub is left full of feathers afterwards, some of them broken, some of them whole. While Elmyra rubs the wet wings as dry as she can – not an easy task, with how much water they had managed to soak – Aerith gathers the wet feathers from the tub. "Can I keep these?" she asks.

"I don't see why not," Elmyra shrugs, running her palm along the back of the middle wing, pressing down to squeeze the water out. "I doubt he needs them anymore."

They're not the only feathers Aerith collects. As the first days turn to weeks, with their guest still only grasping at awareness, he practically moults, leaving bits and pieces of his wings wherever he goes. It's probably because the wings keep dragging on the floor and he does nothing to lift them up whenever he goes up or down the stairs. So, he sheds feathers and Aerith takes to trailing after him like a loyal puppy, carefully collecting each and every one.

Soon, Elmyra stops much noticing their guest – and if ShinRa is looking for him, they don't come there. She still makes sure that both he and Aerith remain indoors, just in case there is a search going on. Aerith, thankfully, doesn't seem to mind and keeps their guest company most of the time, and when she doesn't, he just sits or stands where ever he's left.

They're a house of lost souls, Elmyra sometimes thinks, but she doesn't let herself dwell on it. It's altogether too sad. Instead, she watches Aerith arrange the feathers into neat rows according to size and gets a book on birds that explains what each feather type is.

"The big, hard ones are flight feathers," Elmyra tells her, reading slowly from the book. She's not that good with reading – she never went to school – and some of the words are too long, too big, too complicated. But her reading is better than Aerith's, seeing that the girl can't read at all. "They're the ones on the surface. And the smaller, fluffier ones are down feathers – they're underneath the flight feathers."

"What about these ones?" Aerith asks, holding up one that's a little bit of both, hard and smooth at the tip and downy and soft at the base.

"After fea-feathers, I think," Elmyra says, squinting at the word. The specific feathers have odd, complicated names and she can't quite figure them out – the words aren't in the least familiar. Aerith doesn't mind, however, and after a while they leave the book and instead study the shape of the man's wings for further understanding.

"Wings are kind of neat," Aerith decides after a while. "I would like to have wings."

It's just a throwaway comment, but Aerith makes throwaway comments so very rarely, and never without first thinking about it. Elmyra looks at the girl and then at the silent man and finally at the mass of dropped feathers in front of them.

"You know what, sweetie," she says with a laugh. "I think we might have just enough feathers to make you a pair."

Aerith's eyes widen and she almost jumps up in excitement. "Can we? Can we really?"

"We definitely have the materials," Elmyra says, taking one of the feathers and holding it up. It's an impressive specimen of its kind, longer than her arm easily. "Not as big as his and you wouldn't be able to fly, but I think we can put something together."

And so, while their guest watches silently with dull eyes, Elmyra and Aerith get some cardboard and glue and yarn and get to work. They cut the shapes of the wings from the cardboard and then arrange the feathers along it. The result is… not very artistic or very whole – in the end they run out of feathers – but the overall result is obviously like that of wings. While Aerith bounces with the sort of childish excitement Elmyra had never seen in her, the woman makes a harness from the yarn and then, the moment of truth, Aerith dons it on.

They are small and a bit awkward and a little lopsided. But Aerith is obviously delighted with them, spinning around and turning herself this way and that to watch them, even trying to make them flap a little. For a moment, she looks like the eight year old she's supposed to be and something inside Elmyra relaxes and lets out a sigh of relief.

Maybe, just maybe, Aerith still has time to be a child after all.

Elmyra is so concentrated on the obvious delight on Aerith's face as she dances about in her little wings, that it takes her a while to notice the man, watching Aerith. Watching her, with eyes that actually see, with a look of confusion on his face – with an expression.

"Good morning," Elmyra says to him, and he startles, looks up at her, his eyes wide, almost scared. She makes a soothing motion and smiles. "It's okay, you're safe. You're in the Sector Five Slums – we found you a couple of weeks back, and if someone's after you, they don't know you're here."

The man says nothing, just stares at her, and then looks at Aerith. "Is… is that…?" he then asks, his voice soft and choked, barely audible. There is recognition in his eyes and Elmyra stills, frowns, wishes desperately that she had her husband's pistol at hand.

"That is my daughter," she says, stiff and severe and Aerith pauses her dance to look.

"But…" the man says and trails away as Aerith shyly comes forward, half hiding behind Elmyra's skirt

"Hello," the girl says. "Are you here now? Elmyra said you had trouble getting back. We've been waiting."

"I'm… I'm here," the blond man says, though it sounds more like a question. Clumsy, he falls off the chair where he's sitting and to his knees on the floor, staring at Aerith in wonder and incomprehension. Then he looks up at Elmyra. "She has wings?" he asks.

"We made them from your feathers," Elmyra says, a little uncertain.

The blond man blinks and turns almost violently to stare at the wings at his side, still hanging limp on the floor. As if they could feel his attention, they jerk, snap up a little, and then collapse down again as he makes a move as if to try and get away from them. "No," he whispers and with shaking fingers reaches out to touch them. The wings jerk and he shudders, his fingers gripping the feathers hard, clawing at them. "No, not this," he says, desperate and choked and almost sobbing. "Not this."

As he tries to rip the feathers off, Aerith suddenly lunges past Elmyra, and grabs a hold of the man's hand. "Stop it!" she says. "Don't hurt yourself!"

Elmyra makes a move to get her away from the obviously deranged man, afraid he might strike her, but instead he freezes completely and looks at her, startled. Aerith stares back, almost hugging his muscular arm in an attempt to draw it away from the wing. "Don't," she says. "It's okay, it's alright. It's not bad. Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt your wings."

"But I don't want them," he chokes out. "I'm not supposed to have them. I –"

"But you do and they're pretty," Aerith says seriously.

"People aren't supposed to have wings," he says, now sounding desperate, shaking under the little girl's severe gaze. "No one is born with wings."

"So what? People aren't born with clothes either, but we still wear them. And now I'm wearing wings, look," Aerith says, turning a little and showing off her make-shift wings. "And I like them and I like your wings, so please don't destroy them."

Elmyra watches the whole scene with something akin to awe. Aerith has never shown such vehemence about anything and all the while the man – who obviously is much stronger than the little girl holding him back – seems completely unable to fight her. He just folds under her eyes and touch and let's go of the feathers, his hand shaking.

The woman has to hold herself back to keep from reaching out, as the man lifts his other hand and touches the wings Aerith wears. He's still shaking so much that had he been standing he surely would've fallen over, and there is something very frightening about a man as obviously strong as he is, looking so terrified by something as simple as fake wings. His hands tremble as he touches the cardboard and feather creations.

"Okay?" Aerith asks, releasing his arm carefully but keeping her hand there, just in case.

"Yes. Yes, alright," he whispers and then, without warning, he began to cry.

It takes Elmyra by surprise but Aerith just steps forward, sits in the man's lap and winds her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. He lets out a sob and his shaking arms come around her, below the fake wings, holding her gently as if she was something that could shatter if he touched her too hard.

Elmyra kneels beside them, only barely able to guess at what they might share, what Aerith might see in the man – what they both might've gone through, in ShinRa's hold. The man, who might or might not be some twisted attempt at creating an angel, cries hard and wretchedly and helplessly, protected by a little girl just as unfortunate as him and Elmyra, who has never experienced the horrors they have, can only watch.

3.

He remembers things in flickering, spiralling strings that come and go like a breeze through his mind. His name is Cloud, and he's not supposed to be here. He is not supposed to have wings. And this little girl whom he knows but doesn't, he isn't supposed to be able to touch her. She isn't supposed to be there either. She isn't supposed to have wings, and they fit her and don't and for some reason the sight of them fills him with fear and awe. He isn't sure what is going on. His head is full of green mist and his wings feel heavy.

He wants to rip them off but can't, because the little girl told him not to – because she likes them.

"We found you in the Church, a couple of weeks back," the woman, Elmyra, tells him once he has managed to pull himself together, somewhat. "You were unconscious at first and when you came to, you were… not quite all there, so we kept you here, where you were hidden and safe."

"We've been waiting for you to come to," the little girl, Aerith, says. She keeps close to him, holds his hand – and he knows it is probably to make sure he won't try and rip any more feathers off, rather than for comfort. The handful he had managed to tear off sits on the table in front of them like an accusation, the feathers crumbled, the tips of the spines a little bloody. The spot where he pulled them off stings. He ignores it, and takes comfort in her presence regardless.

"And I fell?" Cloud asks, thinking. He remembers a Church full of flowers – no, there was a pool there, and the walls had collapsed. But then it hadn't been called a Church anymore, or had it? He can't remember which it is. But he does remember a Church, in various stages of destruction and healing. There are always flowers there.

"From above the plate, probably," Elmyra nods and he thinks of plates and sectors and Midgar and hadn't the plates fallen, years ago? But it had been undamaged too, once, all put together and whole and horrifying. He can't tell when it had been the one or the other.

Elmyra continues. "At a guess, you escaped ShinRa, and ended up in the Slums," she says and looks at him. "Do you remember?"

He remembers ShinRa's collapse and the height of its power, he remembers Mako and how it burned on his skin, and he remembers SOLDIER and the Infantry and can't tell if he had been one or the other or if he had been a terrorist, fighting against them both. He remembers killing them, at any rate, tearing those familiar uniforms with a sword bigger and heavier than him that fit his palm like it was made for it. He remembers swords, long and thick and wide and heavy, so many of them. And then One that split into Six, and each and every one of them was an extension of him.

He misses that one the most.

"Yes," he says and thinks of glowing green eyes and a thin blade and how it felt, cutting right through him. He had had wings, and that's why Cloud wishes he could rip his own off.

"Do you think they will look for you?" Elmyra asks, her face serious, her hands clasped tightly together – but they still shake. Cloud looks at them and thinks about the little girl – no, a woman – on the run from ShinRa and the mother, adopted, who tried to protect her.

"No," he says, because the time isn't right, because Aerith is too young, because Cloud isn't supposed to be here. "Not me. But if they see… see the wings…" he trails off and turns and looks at them and he can almost control them now, but not quite. They twitch but refuse to rise from the floor where they lay, useless.

Elmyra bites her lip, looking between him and the little girl at his side. Cloud looks back, steady, knowing what she'll say and he already understands that wish to drive away to protect – he did it too, only to himself. He hadn't been a monster then, but the potential had been there, and there had been children, a little girl and a boy who had foolishly looked up to him, and Cloud had always been so terrified of breaking them.

"I'll leave," he says before the woman has to. "I'll… hide, somewhere."

It would even be welcome. Everything is mangled in his head, like someone has compressed everything he knows and has experienced into a flat sheet where events overlap over people and places, and future and past seem like single pinpricks of mangled present. He needs time and space to spread it all out again.

He looks down at Aerith when the little girl's hand tightens on his. He smiles, or tries to. He doesn't know if he knows how to smile, doesn't remember if he ever has. "It'll keep you safe," he says, squeezing her hand in return – but gently because for all that he has the wings, she has the bones of a bird and he doesn't want to break them.

"Where will you go?" Elmyra asks, her expression serious and grateful and guilty all at once.

"Don't go far," Aerith says quickly. "Don't go far away."

Cloud thinks, and he knows Midgar, how it was and is and will be, but isn't sure what's where. So much of it had been destroyed – this house too is in ruin, somewhere along the line. What is there, that's left after all of it? "The Church," he says slowly. It's the only thing that remains constant. For all that it too is shattered into pieces and torn almost to the ground, it still remains, for as long as he can remember. "I'll go to the Church."

Elmyra frowns. "It's very close," she says slowly.

"But far enough, if you avoid it," Cloud says and looks at Aerith. "I'll just be a runaway taking shelter in an abandoned building, and it will only be me, so long as you stay here."

Aerith gives him a belligerent look before looking down. She is so young, too young, younger than he remembers her – but the past is the same here and she knows too much. "But," she says, slowly, like she’s tasting the idea she's having. "But what if no one comes after you? What if you hide the wings and no one even pays attention to you – can I come then?"

"They're hard to hide, don't you think?" Cloud asks and looks at them. They're big – bigger than the other ones he remembers, even. Big enough to hide in but not to hide them.

She frowns. "I'll figure out a way, and then I'll come to see you," she says and it's said with such conviction that Cloud doesn't even bother to argue.

Elmyra sighs, shakes her head and stands. "I'll give you some of my husband's old clothing, some things we don't need, a bit of food," she says. "But I don't have much."

"I can do with little, thank you," Cloud says, bowing his head. "And thank you for looking after me too."

Aerith hugs him goodbye after Elmyra has handed him a satchel that's mostly empty, but Cloud appreciates the good will of the gesture, as well as the ragged bed roll she hands away with it. Then he heads out, away from the confusing house with its disturbed timeline and stumbles towards the Church with the hope that it stands, thinking it won't, remembering how it was destroyed.

It's there and more whole than he expects. Stones which he thought to be missing sit in their places on the walls and windows he remembers were broken are still there, in their frames. The wood of broken benches and the dust of crumbling mortar litter the floor and everything is both messier and neater than he expects it to be. But the flowers…

There are no flowers. The place where they made a bed of green and white and gold is instead covered by a rubble of stone and broken roof tiles and not a single hint of green is to be seen. Of course not, he thinks, kneeling down there and feeling hollow. Aerith is young. She doesn't make flowers grow yet.

Cloud feels a bit like crying or screaming because this is a wound and he's stuck in it, just before the cut. Aerith is young and not yet dead, and that means Zack is young too – and not yet dead. And he doesn't know who Zack even is, not really, except he has memories in his head and they're not all his but they are his and he holds onto them possessively. And this moment is the calm before the storm and he's shaking like a leaf, expecting the wind.

And yet it's quiet. The Church is absolutely silent, and his own breath is the only thing that stirs the air. Above him, above the Church, the machinery of Midgar hums, but it's a distant sound, the background radiation to the chaos in his head. His wings lie heavy on the dirty wooden floor and he's alone and lost in a time he doesn't know.

He sits there, letting his mind unravel into loose sentences that doesn't make sense. He watches the Church and it is unravelling too, the rubble vanishing and flowers blooming and then it collapses and there is a pool and he can taste the water – the sweetest he has ever tasted. He remembers people, going in and out – he remembers the kids he used to lift into the pool so that the stains beneath their skin would be washed away and it had been a good moment after so many bad ones. He had felt better.

And then the rubble of stone and tiles returns and the flowers haven't even been planted yet, and he tries to figure out the exact year. Aerith seemed to be seven years old, no, a little older. Eight maybe? So ninety three, of the old millennium? He himself would be seven now, and in Nibelheim. At seven, a boy had punched him hard enough to knock three teeth loose. They were baby teeth but he remembers the blood, remembers choking on it. He can almost taste it now.

After a while, Cloud begins to shift the rocks – no, bricks, they had been part of the Church’s walls – and tiles out of the hole in the floor. The earth is barren beneath when he digs his fingers into it and for one mad moment he thinks that if he digs deep enough, he might find the water. He almost tries, but in the end he knows it won't be there so instead he just turns the soil until it looks… healthier.

He lets the movements of his hands guide him from one task to another. The edges of the broken floor are dangerously jagged so he breaks them off, makes a neater, square shaped hole in the floor, one that wouldn't carry the risk of sharp edges. Then he is left with a pile of bricks and ceiling tiles and some twenty long benches worth of broken wood and he isn't sure what to do with it all, but he wants to clean the place up, wants it to be neater because… because…

One day Aerith will come here and plant flowers.

So he gathers the wood and the bricks and the tiles and then uses his useless, unwanted wings to sweep the floor clean of the dust and sand and crumbling stone. The air becomes saturated with the dust and the beams of light shine on the motes dancing in the air and for a little while he's fascinated by the colours playing in the air from the stained glass.

Eventually, he sets his meagre belongings onto the half broken floor of the Church attic, spreading the ragged bed roll in the corner. He sits there, awake, for the rest of the day and the night, and tries not to feel so unnatural.

Naturally, it doesn't work.

The wings are still there, hanging from his back like parasites unwilling to let go of him. They are now grey with dust and dirt, and he almost feels guilty about that because of all the work Aerith and Elmyra had put into keeping them clean, but the Church is as clean as he can make it and that's all he cares about. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Eventually he sleeps, huddled in the corner and into himself and for all that he hates them, the wings are warm against the coolness of the Slum night.

When he wakes up, Aerith is sitting on her knees before him, her fake wings in her lap. Cloud stares at her in incomprehension while she tries to fix a broken feather. The cardboard beneath the feathers is clearly visible in the fake wings, the edges of it sticking out awkwardly.

"You shouldn't be here," he says finally and she looks up and her eyes are so green he can see the flowers she will one day grow in them.

"I know. I don't care," she says. "I'm bored and everything is weird and Elmyra is nice but… she's normal." She shrugs fatalistically, like only a little girl on the run from a mad scientist can and holds up the fake wings. "They aren't very well made, are they?" she asks. "We couldn't get the feather alignment right and then we ran out of feathers."

Cloud accepts the fake wings because it's the only thing he can think to do. They're light and flimsy and yes, very poorly made. Cleaner than his own wings are, though.

"You should go home," he says quietly. "Where it's safe."

She just looks at him and then takes the wings back, donning them and spreading her hands out. The wings are shorter than her arms and they hang off balance but she looks like an angel in the dim light of the Church. But then, she always was one.

"It's not safe anywhere," Aerith shakes her head, looking over her shoulder at the fake wings. "Why don't you like them?"

"Only monsters have wings," Cloud answers.

She scowls at him with all of her little girl's might. "You're stupid," she says.

"Probably," he agrees. "It's true, though."

"Hmph," she says and jumps up, taking a few steps back and forth, reaching her hands backwards and to the bottom of the wings, to flap them awkwardly. "Maybe. But that's only because no one else has tried, I think," she says. "I have wings now, and I'm not a monster. I don't… think I'm a monster."

"You're not," Cloud assures quickly.

"So, it's not only monsters that have wings. I have wings now, and I am not a monster so other things than monsters can have wings, so you can be something else than a monster, too," Aerith says and looks at him. "When we found you, Elmyra called you an angel."

Cloud almost chokes at that, the word somehow jarring. "I'm not. I am… I am not an angel."

"But you could be, the same way I could be me and still have wings," she concludes. "Monster is a stupid label anyway. ShinRa's scientists throw it around too much. It doesn't even mean anything anymore – anything that's not human is a monster but not everything that's a monster is monstrous, so what exactly is a monster? I think it's just another word for a living being which they use, so that when they're cutting it apart, it won't seem wrong to them. It just makes them feel better about destroying other things, like by calling them monsters makes it okay."

Cloud has never thought of it like that, but she probably has a point. She usually does. "Well, even if I'm not a monster, I'm still not human. Humans don't have wings," he says and she throws a hurt look at him – and he remembers, of course. She's not human either. "Sorry," he says, bowing his head.

Aerith sighs and lets go of the fake wings. "Why did you clean the hole in the floor?" she then asks, pointing downward to the Church hall below.

He almost says because then she can plant flowers, but manages to stop himself. "It seemed unsafe," he says instead, which is true enough. "I didn't want anyone to hurt themselves."

"So you're protecting people – like an angel. Elmyra said angels do stuff like that," Aerith says and before Cloud can argue, she speaks again. "Are you going to fix the whole Church?"

Cloud hadn't intended to, no. He had just wanted to clean it. But now that he thinks about it – the destruction that will one day befall it… or maybe not. He's here now and this time, at least, is different. And where else is he going to go? This Church was his home for over a year, before it was destroyed, before the pool appeared. He might as well stay and if he's staying – if Aerith is going to become a constant visitor, then… he might as well make it liveable.

And why else would he be here, except for her?

"Maybe," he says and finally stands up. He looks at his wings, dirty with dust and sand and other things and frowns at them. They twitch and he scowls and finally his mind finds them. Slowly, the top most wing comes up, the third joint coming above his head as the wing slowly, jerkily, folds. The one in the middle follows, fitting against the inside of the top wing and finally the third, the lowest, fits against the middle wing. He's off balance and has to compensate, but the wings aren't quite dragging on the floor anymore.

"Can you fly?" Aerith asks, curious, watching him.

"I don't know," Cloud admits and he doesn't really want to know. "I think you need a pair for flight. I'm… rather lopsided, don't you think?" It's a bad attempt at humour and Aerith doesn't even crack a smile.

"I think we should make you a matching set on the other side," she says and glances at her own wings. "Though we're out of feathers."

"I dropped some, yesterday," Cloud admits. He had shed them all over the place, when he had cleaned the Church. "I, uh. Threw them away, though."

"Well, let's go get them back," Aerith says and takes his hand. Cloud has always been following her and can't help but do so now, too.

An hour or so later, when a breathless Elmyra comes to find them, they're sitting on the Church floor, and Aerith is watching Cloud fix her fake wings with the feathers he had dropped the day previous. He doesn't have glue, but by punching holes into the cardboard he attaches the new feathers carefully until they stick and begin to cover the rest of the cardboard. They still look obviously fake and awkward, but at least now they're covered in feathers, all around.

"Aerith!" Elmyra says at the sight of them. "I thought you promised not to come here!"

Cloud winces guiltily but Aerith just smiles – and it lights up her face in ways Cloud has forgotten. "I said I'd figure out a way for Cloud to hide his wings and then I'd come and that's what I did."

Elmyra opens her mouth at that and then frowns at Cloud who just shrugs his shoulders helplessly, no wiser than her as to the whims of the young Ancient. "And what," Elmyra says slowly, "is this way to hide three rather massive wings, then?"

Aerith grins and takes the fake wings from Cloud's hands and holds them up. "We'll say that they're fake, like these," she says. "They're decoration, like curtains and paintings on walls and frills on dresses."

Elmyra blinks and Cloud arches his eyebrows at the little girl. "I don't think that will quite work," Elmyra says before frowning and looking at Cloud. "Or actually… it actually might," she says slowly. "If you fitted a harness around them… and didn't move them…"

Cloud looks at the wings. It could work, if only barely. "It… might seem a little odd," he says, brushing some of the dirt from the wings. "Having three wings, but only on one side."

"I've seen stranger things down here in the Slums. And maybe we can make another set on the other side," Elmyra says thoughtfully, making Aerith beam as she comes closer, to inspect Cloud. "You got them dirty," the woman says disapprovingly.

"I'm sorry. There was…" Cloud stops himself before he tells them he used them to sweep the floor. It seems somehow disrespectful – which makes no sense since they're attached to his back. But then, very little of what he's experienced since waking up with wings has made sense. "I'll clean them up," he promises. "Somehow."

Elmyra looks around the Church and sighs, shaking her head. "I suppose we’d better help you make this place liveable, if you're going to stay for a while," she murmurs, resting her hands on her hips as she examines the space around them. "Though I suppose you've gotten a bit of a headway on that, already."

Cloud looks around. His memories are still overlapping in the Church and he can't keep track of the walls or the windows and when they're going to break. But he's getting used to it now.

"I'd appreciate it," he says.

"First things first," Elmyra says and looks at him. "We need to hide those eyes of yours. I think there was something with a hood in those clothes I gave you? We'll figure out how to get your wings into it and then I'd feel better if you wore it."

"Alright," Cloud agrees because she's right and even if his history isn't there, the Mako eyes have a history of their own and he might as well hide them. It's a small thing to start with, but it's something. He still shouldn't be there, but he is and he doesn't know if he should do something about that, if he even can.

For now, he'll stay.

4.

Tseng is just a rookie, so there are a lot of things he sees that he doesn't tell anyone about – things that are above his pay-grade to see. Sometimes it's because it's only a matter of time before someone else sees what he's observed so he might as well keep it to himself. Other times it's just too troublesome to bother. A lot of the time it's because to be a Turk is to exercise a certain level of blindness as well as sharp sightedness.

If they report everything that's wrong or against company policy, no one would ever get any rest. On average, each and every citizen of Midgar commits low level crime at least once a week, some more than once a day. Smuggling is the most common –  people bringing in counterfeit or banned goods, or ones that are available, but highly taxed. Most of it's harmless – the most traded banned goods are low grade materia, and it's simply easier to turn a blind eye to it than try and find every orb in Midgar – not to mention the spawned copies of said materia.

 The smuggling of people is another – it's the most common crime in the Slums, for example, where people change hands the way goods do, far too many times for anyone to keep track of. Mostly it's benign – someone wants into Midgar or out of it without having to jump through the official hoops. Sometimes it's human trafficking, plain and simple. Sometimes Turks interfere with the latter sort. More often than not, they don't.

There are other reasons as to why Tseng doesn't always report when his duty would've demanded it. Sometimes it is because reporting would mean exposing or betraying a fellow employee and that's against the unspoken rules of their branch of the Public Safety Maintenance Department. Turks, naturally, break the company charter more than any other branch of it. It's a wordless agreement inside the company that they'd be permitted that luxury, for services otherwise rendered.

But then there are the rarest times, when Tseng sees something he logically should report, and as soon as possible. Certain activities within the company, betrayals he should take to the higher-ups, certain activities outside it, certain criminals that should be apprehended if not killed on the spot… Certain events where he follows his own ethics and moral code, rather than the letter of ShinRa's contracts.

Like the times he discovers certain runaways that should be delivered back to ShinRa's Science Department as soon as possible – and he just doesn't.

Finding Aerith Faremis is one of those events.

He, like every other Turk, had been informed of the high priority of Test Subject A. They had been shown the pictures of first the woman who had most likely died during her escape and then that woman's child, a seven year old girl with brown hair and wide green eyes, devoid of any expression. They had even been told something of the girl's high value – Professor Hojo had let it slip that the girl was an Ancient, most likely the last of her kind, and that the President of ShinRa thought she could lead them to the Promised Land…

That had been over a year ago and no one had found her. Indeed, Tseng supposes no one is really looking either – the Turks who favoured Professor Hojo in any way were rare and their mortality rate was high.

There were some things even a Turk could not lower himself to. Or there should be, anyway.

Tseng finds her accidentally, without really looking. He frequents the Wall Market for various reasons – firstly, because it is the best source of information in the Slums, as long as you know who to go to. And secondly, because the few Wutai immigrants of Midgar could be found there. He doesn't make much noise about his own heritage – indeed, he actively draws attention away from it when he can – but when the day is over and he can take off his tie, he likes to keep in touch.

And so he changes out of the suit and goes below plate, meets with those of his countrymen who know they can trust him, and together they play wéiqí and speak in a language that may one day soon die out. He drinks the cheap knock-off tea that, if one exercises a little imagination, can almost be called traditional. He visits the shack that passes for a temple, and recites old prayers he can still just barely understand, and has his tilak re-applied by a man that can only vaguely be called a devoted follower of the old disciplines.

And then he sees her with a woman examining the goods of a vendor not far from him. He would've missed her completely, but what she's wearing draws his attention – because on her back, she has a set of wings, hand crafted and awkward, feathers poking everywhere. But they're so white, bright against the dull greys and browns of the Slum, like a ray of light. Startlingly pure; they make her look a bit like an angel.

The woman Aerith Faremis is with is wearing a set too – they are much smaller, barely bigger than two palms each, the feathers shorter and fluffier, somehow more commonplace for all that they are wings. The little girl is looking at them and every now and then she reaches out to adjust them because the woman's wings are even more lopsided than hers. Every time she does the woman laughs.

They look out of place, and Tseng isn't the only one who notices – as they go about their shopping, they collect gazes from left and right, from adults and teenage thugs and kids that point and whisper to each other. He has to wonder what on earth they are thinking, wearing something so noticeable and in such a place. Shouldn't they know they ought to hide?

He watches them as they shop and then, unable to help himself, he follows them, artistically out of sight but close enough to see, as they make their way away from Wall Market, through the Sector Six Slums and into Sector Five. And Tseng knows he should report this, but he's curious and confused and Aerith Faremis is eight years old and when Tseng had been eight, he had been playing with wooden swords. A lab is no place for a child.

Tseng knows the layout of the Slums better than most and knows that there is an old Church in the Fifth Sector – but he is not expecting it to be the destination of the two. And yet, that is where they head, little Aerith skipping ahead and pulling the colossal doors open and calling for someone inside. The woman with her basket of food and tiny pigeon wings follows, chuckling. They close the door behind them.

Tseng doesn't go inside, but he had heard the bang of a hammer on a nail and has a suspicion. Cautious and making sure to keep out of sight, he circles around the Church, a sad remainder of the old town that had once stood where Midgar now stands, and he sees the touches of someone's hand on it. There is new mortar here and there, and a piece of a wall that had been broken has been rebuilt. He can see tools on the rooftop and that parts of the roof have been repaired, the red tiles replaced.

Someone is fixing the Church. And judging by the looks of it, Aerith Faremis and the woman who most likely has been taking care of her for the past year or so are somehow involved with it.

After a moment of consideration, Tseng checks his civilian clothing to make sure he's nondescript. He loosens his hair from the ponytail he keeps it in, running his fingers through it to make it a little less neat. Then, looking no different than the other Wutai immigrants that live in the Slums, he makes for the Church.

He has seen the inside of it once, when a fugitive had tried to find refuge inside. It is different now. The floor is clean, where it isn't covered in miscellaneous construction materials – by the looks of it, the bits of wood and stone and metal have been collected from the junk yards. There is a shadow that makes Tseng look up to see that the formerly broken floors above have been replaced by makeshift scaffolding – and someone is remaking them, building a whole new floor there. It's not so low as to ruin the feel of the open space, but it adds weight to the hall that makes everything seem… more solid.

The Church no longer looks like it's falling apart, crumbling with neglect. Someone has been caring for it, rebuilding it. The mortar between bricks has been fixed and replaced here and there – a couple of the pillars have been replaced with makeshift metal ones while the stone ones lay on the floor, in various stages of repair.

The only thing still broken is the floor further away from the door, where once upon a time the podium and the altar had been. There is a square hole in the floor, where three people are sitting making sandwiches.

There is Aerith Faremis with her makeshift wings, sitting just at the edge with her feet hanging in the hole on the floor. The woman she was with, with her pigeon wings, is just beside her. And then there is a man in a sleeveless hoodie, the hood pulled up. On his back there are wings far more magnificent than those of Aerith’s – but only on one side, his left side.

On the right side he has no wings, but instead there are skeletal mockeries of wing bones only, made from wire and bits of rusting pipe, ugly and jagged. There are three of them, like there are three of the fully made wings on the other side, and the man who wears them looks unbalanced and strange. Across his torso runs the straps of the harness, holding those mismatched wings in place – his harness being thick leather, rather than the cheap yarn of Aerith's and the woman's wings.

Tseng can't see the man's face properly – the hood shadows it and his hair, blond by the looks of it, falls to cover his eyes. The man has a book in his lap and he had been reading from it out loud in a quiet voice – now the man is silent and Tseng knows that despite the fact that he's facing downward, the man is looking at him, can feel it in the way his skin prickles.

"Hello?" the unknown woman asks, looking up from the book she and the little girl both had been looking at as the man had read to them. "Can we help you?"

"I, uh. Heard bangin' an' started wonderin' if there was some'un in 'ere," Tseng said, in his best Slum drawl, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Ain’t seen nobody 'ere before."

"Well, there will be someone here from here on out," the woman says, smiling, and glances at the hooded man. "I think you could use a lock on the doors," she murmurs.

"It's not the point," the man answers while he closes the book and sets it down on the floor. His voice almost too quiet to be heard and Tseng knows the man's gaze doesn't ever shift from him.

"Right. Pity. Me an' some guys come 'ere every now an' then. Guess we can't, anymore," Tseng drawls. Then he tilts his head a bit. "What's with the wings?"

"It's fashion!" Aerith Faremis says, jumping up and spinning around. Reaching back with her hands, she makes the fake wings flap. "Aren't they nice?"

"Kinda noticeable," Tseng comments and thinks that a little over a year ago she had been in a laboratory, in a paper gown. And then she'd been gone and her mother had been mortally wounded right in front of her, when she had made to get away. Aerith had been a cold eyed, vacant child then, and for all that there were hundreds of hours of footage on her, she never had the slightest expression in them.

Now she smiles and it shines.

The blond man shifts a bit towards the unknown woman and murmurs something too low to hear. She glances back at him, frowns, and then stands up. "Sweetie, time for us to go home," she says, looking to Aerith.

"Go, already? But we only just –" Aerith says and then stops, looking between the woman and the man. What she sees is hard to tell, but it takes the smile from her lips. "Alright," she says, becoming serious and glancing at Tseng and away again. It's a terribly knowing look and while Tseng wonders at it, the woman gathers the basket and some of the food before she and Aerith file past Tseng silently.

"I guess I've worn my welcome too," Tseng says, making a move to leave as well, wanting to follow the woman to see where she'd take Aerith, since they obviously didn't live at the Church.

"Stay a while," the blond man says, and though the words are quiet they make shivers of unease run up Tseng's spine. The massive Church doors close after the woman and the girl with finality, and then Tseng is alone with the strange hooded man with his strange habit of mismatched wings.

"As much as I appreciate the welcome, this is a little weird, man," Tseng says, giving the man's obviously muscular arms a slightly uneasy look. He is an expert in the use of firearms and quite satisfied with his abilities but despite that, even though he even now has a concealed pistol with him, for some reason he isn't entirely sure it'll be useful here. "I think it'd be better for everyone involved if I –"

"Do I have to kill you, Turk?" the blond man asks, and Tseng's skin crawls as the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It's said calmly and quietly, almost peacefully – but there is something awful about the way it's said. The words echo and they sound almost sad, like the man would prefer not to but he knows he can do it, like it will be easy for him.

"Who are you?" Tseng asks, and very carefully doesn't reach for his weapon, no matter how much his instincts scream for him to do it. What he wants to ask is what gave him away, where did he slip – or has the man seen him before and if so, then where… but that would give too big of a weakness away.

The blond man doesn't answer. He stands instead and the size of his left side wings becomes all the more obvious – together they're bigger than the man is, two, three times larger, and they over crowd him. Tseng imagines for a moment that he can see the wings twitch – they're so well made that they look real. The reality of them makes the metal skeletons of wings on the right seem all the more odd and ugly.

And Tseng thinks, unable to help himself, about the old stories of angels and how, if the man were able to spread out those odd wings, they'd be big enough to take so much space that the grand open hall of the Church would seem small in comparison.

"I know you're Tseng of the Turks, and I know your ethics are not quite the ethics of the company you keep. You'd prefer not to hand over a child to those who would vivisect her. At least… I hope not," the blond, winged man says, still quiet, still calm, for all that he's spouting impossibilities. "But you still keep that company, and you do it out of loyalty. So. Do I have to kill you now, to protect her?"

Tseng swallows, frozen. It's ridiculous – here is a man who wears wings and the man hasn't even made any sort of threatening move, he doesn't even seem to have a weapon unless one counts the jagged mockeries of wing skeletons on the right side of his back. And yet, Tseng feels as if he's never been in a more dangerous, more volatile situation – he feels like he's standing on a field of dynamite and a stray word will make everything ignite.

And the blond man just stares at him, wings and all, ridiculous but for the information he shouldn't have and the sheer, utter conviction that he can kill Tseng, and that he'd do it too if he felt it was necessary.

"Answer me," the winged man demands softly.

Tseng thinks about the little girl in the laboratory security feed, sitting on the exam table while they harvest tissue samples – how she never said a word, never so much as winced. Seven years is nothing, but for a child raised under the scalpel, it's long enough to learn how to ignore pain. A little girl, who now smiles and wears fake wings and makes them flap with her hands.

When he had been that age, hadn't he wanted wings too, hadn't he wanted to fly? And if he, who had a painless childhood, wanted to escape gravity so much, what must it be like for her?

While he thinks this, the hooded man just stands there, waiting for him. With wings of his own – skeletal and dead looking on one side. Why? If he can make them so well that the three on the left hand side look alive, why not make a pair instead of this mockery of a set? Is there significance to it, or… maybe it's a religious thing?

They are in a Church, after all.

And whilst some would disregard that entirely, Tseng is different. He wears a tilak on his forehead not just because of culture but because he still has faith. Ridiculously, Tseng feels a little like reciting a prayer of protection, except he's not sure who that would protect and from what. He knows the old stories and the old religions, and he knows what and whom they used to worship in this Church, and he knows which one of them is the trespasser here.

"I won't report her," he finally says, because what other answer is there, really? "I wouldn't have, even without you threatening me."

The blond man nods his head slowly and his lips quirk – it's almost a smile, but it's a smile in the same way the Slums are a good place to live. A mockery of an expression from someone who doesn't know how to convey emotion properly. "I know," he says, and it has as much conviction to it as the death threat from before.

Tseng nods slowly, a little unsure but letting himself relax. Then he looks at the man's wings in open curiosity, and thinks of the woman and the girl and maybe it's religion but… "Them wearing wings isn't precisely conducive to hiding," he points out. "That's why I noticed them, and her. If they weren't wearing them, I wouldn't have looked at them twice."

"You would've noticed," the winged man says and sits down again, careful, the skeletal wings scraping against the floor awkwardly. "She insists and we can't say no to her," he says, and tugs at the straps that run across his chest and shrugging. He makes the motion more grand that it has any right to be – when he shrugs, the wings shrug too.

Tseng cautiously comes closer. "Why? Is it faith?"

The blond man quirks his travesty of a smile again, and it looks no better this time. "Is there something wrong with having faith?" he asked. "I have faith in her and maybe, just maybe, she has faith in me. It's not much. But it's something."

"She's not a goddess," Tseng says, frowning now.

The blond man laughs at that. It's an awkward sound, breathless and quiet and odd. Disjointed and just as unpractised as his smile. "No, she's not. She's a little girl," he says and it sounds like a private joke. "Just a little girl."

"A special little girl."

"Just a bit," the blond man agrees and hangs his boot clad feet in the hole in the floor. "But that's never made her wrong, no matter what ShinRa thinks. And for all that she's not a goddess, well. ShinRa's word isn't exactly the word of God either, is it?"

"No… no, I guess not," Tseng murmurs and feels a bit like he's missing half of this conversation, that there are nuances that he isn't catching. He wishes, suddenly, that he had a recording device with him – and then dismisses the wish. It would've been too dangerous, to make that sort of hard evidence. "This isn't a good place for her," he says after a moment. "Any place would be better."

"Yes, well. Little we can do about that," the man says. "At least no one expects to find her here, do they? No, they think she's long gone."

Tseng has to concede to that – they did. No one had ever imagined that Aerith Faremis might still be in Midgar. Most don't even think she is alive anymore, but if she is then obviously she wouldn't stay anywhere near the people looking to capture her. Ifalna, for all that she must be dead, couldn't have been so foolish as to not tell her daughter to get away, as far away as she could.

No one is looking for her in Midgar – and that hides her in plain sight.

"The risk is there still, though," Tseng comments idly.

"It's always there. The corners of the planet where ShinRa isn't yet a factor are few and far between and fairly unliveable," the winged man says, shrugging. "And even those aren't safe from ShinRa. But like this…" he motions behind him, at the wings. "Which one of us is more noticeable?"

Fair point. The Turk lets the matter slide and instead looks around them and then to the floor. "Why is there a hole in the floor?" he finally asks, because he can't think of anything else he wants to know. Or, more precisely, he can think of a million things he wants to ask, but he doesn't want to know the answers.

"Go down. Look closer," the winged man says and after a moment of hesitation, Tseng drops down into the hole. At first, he sees nothing but what looks like freshly turned earth, slightly moist for reasons he can't begin to decipher. But there, just barely peeking out from the dirt, he can see something that might be a hint of green.

There are plants growing there. In Midgar. Below the plate.

"She is an Ancient," the blond man says calmly – or maybe sadly, it's hard to tell the difference, the man speaks so quietly. "It's what they do." He leans back, pushing at the wings on his side until he can get his hand past the feathers, to rest his palms on the floor behind him. Then he looks up. "I'm going to put in a ceiling window," he says, nodding at above him. "So they can still get light."

"I see," Tseng murmurs, swallowing, and carefully gets up from the hole, not wanting to damage the new, miraculous plant life. Then he looks at the winged man and wonders – is this all for the little girl? The wings, the Church, the freshly turned earth, freshly planted. All of it. And who is this guy who goes through all the trouble, just to please a little girl?

"Will you come here again?" the winged man asks without looking down.

"I suppose I will, occasionally," Tseng says, because he knows better than to leave this be. He might not report it, but he will keep an eye on it. If something happens… he wants to be on top of the matter. "I won't be a frequent visitor, that would draw attention to this place, but… I will visit." He hesitates and then adds carefully; "Do you need anything that I can provide?"

The man considers. "Feathers," he says thoughtfully.

"… Feathers?" Tseng asks, incredulous.

"Yes. We have a bit of a project going on, her and I," the hooded man says, motioning at his own wings. "But feathers are a little hard to come by here."

"Right," Tseng nods slowly. "I'll… see what I can do. I suspect that once people know that there is someone who would like to buy them, someone will appear to sell them."

The winged man nods. He hesitates and says softly, "You're a good man, Tseng. Don't let ShinRa ruin you."

Tseng frowns a bit at that, not sure how he's supposed to take the sentiment. He is a Turk after all, it's not in his job description to be a good man. But if not handing a little girl over to a bunch of blood thirsty scientists makes him a good man, then he'd bear the title. "I'll try," he says.

Of course, many have tried, and most failed – ShinRa has a way of corrupting even the kindest and the brightest and Tseng doesn't hold any false hopes of being either. But he has an edge most don't; he has things to protect. And maybe they're small things like a language he has to force himself to retain and culture he's already mostly forgotten, but they're still something. Something to lean on, to take refuge in, when there's nothing but ShinRa's rust and shadows about.

"It's been… enlightening," Tseng says.

The man who would be an angel gives him his charade of a smile again before tilting his head a bit. "Would you like a set of wings? They might suit you."

"I doubt that," the Turk says with a quiet, dry chuckle, and turns to leave. "Take care of her. There are others out there, still looking."

Later, he puts a word in the right ear. Later, he will leave a box stuffed full of chocobo feathers on the Church steps and it's a small gesture but for some reason it leaves him hiding a smile for the rest of the day.

5.

The first time Cait Sith – and through him, Reeve Tuesti – sees wings in the Slums, it is on a woman with her hair done up in a bun, who is idly haggling with a vendor over mostly brown vegetables. The wings on her back are small, like a dove's, and though some people stare at her she doesn't seem to mind or even notice. It's an odd fashion choice, Reeve muses, but the Slums are full of them, so he shrugs his shoulders.

The second time Cait Sith sees wings, it's the woman again and she's crouched on the ground, with a group of kids around her, watching attentively. She's fitting a set of wings onto a boy's back while the boy's father watches, amused. The boy's wings are all yellow, made from chocobo feathers judging by the looks of them, but he doesn't seem to mind. Soon, he is running around, whooping with joy, with the wings flapping in the air behind him while the other kids follow, jealous.

And then, suddenly, there are more of them as set by set wings trickle into the Slums of Midgar. First it's the kids, with yellow wings about as long as their arms. Then there is a teenage girl, who walks with her head held high and with wings on her back, yellow too, but a slightly different design – hers are a little sharper, pointing upward, proud and defiant. Then more teenagers wear wings until finally Cait Sith observes a couple of middle aged women – prostitutes – all with wings on their backs.

It fascinates Reeve, and when Cait Sith sees the woman with dove's wings, the plush toy follows her, trailing her away from the market, through the Sector Six Slums, and into Sector Five where there is a Church. Reeve's always known about the Church, but it had been empty before. Not anymore, it seems.

No, there is a man there, wearing a dark sleeveless hoodie, with wings of his own – his is an odd set, though, or sets. Three wings on each side – white and perfect on the left side, and skeletal and rough on the right, made of rusting metal. He is sitting on the steps of the Church working with a set of wings, and judging by the kids gathered around him, it's for one of them. They all watch, breathlessly fascinated, as he fixes them.

While Cait Sith and through him Reeve watches with equal fascination, the man finishes and then helps a dark haired girl don them. With a wild laugh of happiness, the girl launches into a run, the other kids following her, all of them with their hands held up, their wings flapping – a crowd of little, yellow winged Slum angels.

Not all of the children go. A slightly older girl with white wings stays behind with the man and the woman approaches them, holding the basket up. They share a few words and together the three of them head inside the Church. The plush toy doesn't follow them, not now that Reeve knows where the wings come from. It seems like just another odd Slum workshop, with somewhat strange goods, but nothing dangerous, so he leaves it be.

But over the next weeks Cait Sith observes curiously how the wings become standard fashion in the Slums. At first it's only the young and the easily amused that bother with them, but as time goes by, the idea of them seems to spread. Eventually, through Cait Sith's eyes Reeve watches a big, burly man with hair shorn short and tattoos all over his neck, with a pair of wings on his back. It would be a ridiculous sight, if there wasn't something so very… inspiring about it.

The Slums have always, ever since Midgar first began, been a constant source of fascination for him. Midgar is all efficiency and smooth design, not very attractive by appearance, no, but streamlined. Midgar is designed to work. The Slums are the complete antithesis of that – they simply are, the people there simply live, not to pay bills or get new things, not to shop or entertain themselves, but just to live.

Sometimes, Reeve can't help but think that despite all the luxuries people above plate have, it's those below the plate who are the happiest. They paint pictures on walls and drink themselves into a stupor, they entertain fetishes and oddities. Sure, they fight too and kill and brawl, and there's crime and poverty, but there's more laughter beneath the plate than above it. There, people do things because they simply want to, rather than because they have to – and they do things regardless of how strange it might seem to outsiders. Above the plate everyone worries about appearances – below no one cares.

And now, they wear wings.

Curious, Reeve has Cait Sith return to the Church, where all the wings seem to originate. There, Cait Sith sneaks in on the light feet of a cat, crawling along the wall and hiding in shadows. What he finds there isn't quite what he expects. The memento of the old town has been rebuilt, the walls fixed and someone has built a full floor above the Church hall. And the hall itself… has been turned into a workshop.

Along the walls there are roughly made tables covered in tools, in pieces of metal and stacks of cardboard and some fabrics and everywhere, absolutely everywhere there are feathers. The man with mismatched wings sits by one of the tables, with the girl from before at his side as he idly puts together the rough shape of a wing. Judging by the joints of the wing design, they're trying to make a moving model.

"I can give them joints, but movement is the difficulty," the man says, and holds the wings stretched out. It is awkward and obviously made from cheap material, but it had joints and all the potential of movement. "Maybe, if I put a hand hold here…"

"That's lame," the girl sighs, leaning her weight against his shoulder, and Reeve wonders if they're siblings. "Isn't there a mechanical way to do it?"

"Probably, but we don't have the means. It would take power sources and motors and in the end it would be either too heavy or too fragile and, of course, too expensive," the man says. "If I had some materia, I could probably make a magitech version but… that has its own difficulties."

"What's magitech?"

"It's technology that's powered by your own magic," the man shrugs and sets the wings down among the blueprints. "It’s… hard to explain. I can't do it, though – I don't have the right materia."

"Aww. Can't you get some from the Wall Market?"

"I'd need a materia called Manipulate and it’s not exactly common. Anyway, magitech is hard to use – since it uses your own energy as the power source, using it tires you," the man says while spreading the joints of the wings out. They creak, just a little. "For now, let's settle on a set you can control manually."

The girl sighs but nods, and together they get to work on the design. Cait Sith watches how they work on the frame made of thin rods of metal and some cardboard, which is then covered in hardened leather. After that, while the man starts working on the harness, the girl starts sewing and gluing feathers in careful, neat rows, with the practiced skill of someone who has done the work dozens of times.

They pause in the midst of their respective tasks half an hour later when a group of kids enter the Church, noisy and laughing and all of them with wings on their backs. It’s only then that Reeve notices the hole in the floor and the hint of greenery sprouting there – because that's where the kids instantly head. They're like a flock of fantastical creatures as they gather around the hole, peering down into it. With a laugh the girl sets the wing down and goes to them, and soon they're all of them sitting on the floor around the hole and the kids are demanding a story.

"I think it's someone else's turn to read," the man with mismatched wings says, fetching a picture book from one of the desks and then selecting a child at random. Then he sits beside the boy he had chosen and, with his patient guidance, the boy starts to haltingly read a story about a young chocobo that wanted to learn how to fly.

The kids stay maybe for half an hour, through about twenty pages of the story, spread across eight different kids who struggle through the words laboriously. When they eventually tire of it, dashing off without warning, the man and the girl simply get up, and the man puts the book away.

"You're nice," the girl says, smiling and nudging at the man with her elbow. "Doing this for them. You try to be all cool and aloof, but you're really just a big softie."

"So I am," the man shrugs. "It's not exactly a hardship – and I had enough practice with you and your mother. Can you get me that screwdriver?" and together they get back to working on the wings.

Cait Sith watches until they finish the wings. The result isn't half bad; for all that the materials are most likely collected from the junk yards. They don't quite look real but they're far more realistic than Reeve himself could've managed, if he had tried his hand at making such things; obviously the two know their work.

With a smile, the girl takes her own white pair off and then tries the new set on, the man adjusting the leather straps of the harness they sit in. Then, fitting her fingers into the hand holds at the third joint of the wings, she holds them up and makes them flap, moving them manually with her hands.

She laughs, flapping the yellow feathers at the man. "I feel silly."

"You look silly, too," the man answers with a hint of an awkward smile, like he's proud but doesn't know how to show it. "Yellow doesn't suit you."

"Yeah, but what can you do?" the girl shrugs and pushes the wings into a folded position and spreads them out again. The movement is a little jerky and awkward, but it seems anatomically correct to Reeve's unadjusted eye. "Aren't there chocobos of other colours?"

"There are, but they're harder to breed. I've sent Bill a message to see if he can get me other colours too, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. At least not unless Bill manages to get a proper breeding program running."

"Maybe we should start dyeing them. Or bleaching them," the girl muses, trying to spread the wings a little forward, to fold them around herself. "People are getting bored of yellow."

"Dyes are costly… but I suppose if people are willing to pay for it, I wouldn't mind trying," the man answers. "How are the joints? Do they hit your elbows?"

"A bit, but it's not bad."

They work a bit more with the wings before the girl dons her own white pair and gets up. She kisses the man on the cheek and hugs him before heading off, leaving the man with mismatched wings alone in the Church full of feathers.

"You wanna come down from there now?" the man asks, glancing up at the high windowsill where Cait Sith sits.

For a moment Reeve sits still behind his computer, staring at the hooded figure on the screen in surprise – the man had shown no sign of knowing he was there. Then, slow and unsure, he writes and Cait Sith speaks. "Yikes," the plush toy says. "Ye kent Ah was haur? Did nae pure techt tae intrude."

"You didn't," the man says. "Join me."

Cait Sith jumps down and cautiously approaches the table where the man is sitting. "Do you want a set of wings?" the man asks, taking out some rumpled pieces of paper and a piece of charcoal and starting to sketch.

"Ah dornt hink they'd fit me," Cait Sith says and jumps onto the table, to watch him. "Ah got me a mukker, thocht, a moogle. They micht suit hem." He then watches for a moment while the man sketches out another pair of wings. "Wa wings?" he then has to ask, because Reeve is curious and it seems to have a meaning that everyone who wears them knows and because they all know it, they don't bother to say it.

"Why not wings?" the man asks back without looking up from his sketch. "They don't hurt anyone, and they give people something to laugh or be happy about. So why not wings?"

Well, it is hard to argue with that. It is a bit odd, but so are many other things – so are a good eighty percent of the things Scarlet's department creates and those do hurt people. And Reeve himself, with his robotic toys, isn't really one to speak for what is or isn't odd.

"Ah cannae say Ah hae ever heard ay Magitech," he says then, thoughtful. Technology that was powered by magic… Mako technology was sometimes called that, but the man had said materia, not mako.

"Imagine a basic pressure piston – the pressure can be air or water or steam, it doesn't matter. Instead of an engine to supply the heat and the pressure, you have a bit of Fire materia. And maybe Ice too, depending on how much pressure you're working with," the man says. "And then you feed it a bit of magic, to ignite the materia, to work the piston. That's the basic idea."

Reeve frowns at that and yes, he can see how that would work. "An' th' Manipulate materia?" he has Cait Sith ask.

The man glances at the cat toy. "Working one piston is easy – you can do it by hand if you have to. But something more complicated will require several. Several pistons and several materia to power them. You connect those with magic conducting circuitry, and put a Manipulate into its core, and you can work it all, just by powering the Manipulate…"

Behind his monitor, Reeve runs the words through his head and he can't quite correlate them. It sounds so very simple, so very easy – and yet he has never heard of such a thing, and he had thought he was on top of every bit of mechanical and magical engineering on the planet. But this… this is new. Leaning in again, he wrote and Cait Sith spoke. "Ah dornt suppose ye coods gie an example?"

The hooded man just nods and takes another sheet of somewhat worn paper, spreading it out over the blueprints and sketches of wings. With steady hands, and obviously the right technical and magical know how, he then proceeds to draw the circuitry and calculations of a basic Magitech piston system, controlled by a Manipulate materia at its heart.

"It's more art than engineering, really," the man says. "The amount of materia has to be… very precise. But if you can make it right, it works simply by channelling magic into the Manipulate alone, and thinking about it – like casting a spell."

"… Whaur did ye learn aboot thes?" Cait Sith asks while Reeve's mind whirls with the possibilities.

The blond man shrugs, the wings on his back rustling and rattling. "It's an old art. Forgotten. It's how Ancient technology worked," he says and rolls the sheet up, handing it to Cait Sith. "I used to study it, some time ago."

Cait Sith takes the sheet, holding it tightly. Reeve has the recording of it, of course, but he wants the actual sheet, to examine it in person and he's grateful – he's astonished that he's being given it for free, this idea, this concept that's like nothing he's ever heard of before. "Wa ur ye givin' me thes?"

"The man who built you ought to figure out what to do with it," the hooded man shrugs. "I wouldn't mind a bit of compensation, though."

"Th' Manipulate materia?" Cait Sith asks in understanding.

"If you can get your hands on it. I don't exactly have the means here," the hooded man shrugs, looking away. "Mind you, I only want to make wings with it and that's not precisely useful for anyone. But it doesn't hurt anyone, either, and that's… not a bad thing, I think."

"Nae. Ah suppose it isnae," Cait Sith agrees, looking down at the sheet. "Yoo're a funay bloke," he then says.

"Better that than the opposite," the hooded man says, and holds out a hand. "Cloud," he says.

"Cait Sith," the toy answers and they shake.

A few days later, Reeve gets his hand on some Manipulate and despite the fact that he logically should, and that he wants to, try and experiment with it himself, he instead hands it over to Cait Sith who carries it down to the Slums. Cloud is in the middle of another impromptu lesson – this one about numbers that the kids draw on the Church floor with chalk and charcoal.

The girl with white wings is there too, crouched by a set of calculations that Reeve recognizes – it's the magitech calculations.

The lesson is over and done with as suddenly as it had been the last time and as the kids rush away again, Cloud turns to Cait Sith and accepts the Manipulate with a quirky half smile. The girl with the white wings crouches down and smiles at the cat toy. "Hello there," she says. "Cloud told me about you."

"Awrite, missy!" the toy answers, holding out a hand. "Cait Sith at yer service. It's huir uv a braw tae meit ye!"

"Wh-what?" she laughs, bewildered.

"He's saying it's nice to meet you," Cloud translates, smiling.

"I see! I'm Aerith; and you too!" she smiles and they shake, while Cloud examines the marble sized orb of Manipulate materia.

"It's unmastered," he murmurs.

"Ah hud tae gie it special, reit au th' assemply line. It's nae exactly a' th' gang type," Cait Sith shrugs and jumps onto the table. "Is it nae guid, unmastered?"

"No. Unmastered is just what I wanted," Cloud says and holds it in his fist. While the girl leans in to watch, Cait Sith nearly jumps back as he sees the glow of the magic the man forces into the orb, as it shines between the man's fingers and then through the back of his hand, highlighting the bones and sinews beneath. Of course, Reeve knows about materia, knows how it matures with the magic channelled through it, but he's never seen anyone channel magic directly into a materia the way Cloud is doing, with such force and speed and…

There is a sound like glass breaking.

When Cloud opens his hand the materia is still glowing, only now it's shattered into two pieces, one of them larger than the other.

"You broke it!" the girl gasps.

"No, I mastered it," the man says, setting the two shards down on the table. "Materia grows with the rate you use it, the magic you channel through it. It's called maturing and the more mature the materia is, the more powerful it is. Eventually, the materia will be as mature as it can get, and that's when the materia is mastered, as people know it."

"But it's broken, isn't it?" Aerith asks, worried.

Cloud shrugs. "Materia has a certain maximum point of growth – no one knows why, but materia likes to be about the size of a marble. When materia is matured, it makes it grow bigger though, and it puts pressure on it. Eventually, at the last stage of the process, the pressure inside is so great that the materia can't handle it and… it breaks."

"Th' bigger piece is th' mastered materia, ye see," Cait Sith says, and Reeve is beyond fascinated. He's never seen anyone do that, just master materia in one sitting. "An' th' wee piece is a whole new materia. That's materia spawnin'."

"The new materia is basically a clone of the old one. In the next couple of days, they’ll both become spherical again," Cloud adds, holding up the bigger piece. "If left alone, this one will revert to the standard marble size, and it won't evolve anymore. The little piece will be a bit smaller, unevolved, and the process can be repeated on it."

Aerith examines the piece with fascination. "I never knew," she murmurs, taking the smaller piece. "Does that mean that you can clone materia like this forever?"

"Pretty much," Cloud shrugged. "There is also a little fact about materia that most people don't know."

While Cait Sith and Aerith both watch like the fascinated students they are, the man sets the smaller shard of unmastered Manipulate aside, and takes the bigger one. Then, after wrapping it in a cloth, he smashes it into bits with a hammer before carefully unfolding the cloth around it to reveal a good two dozen shards, glimmering in the faint light of the Church.

"Well, now you definitely broke it," Aerith says, though she sounds fascinated.

"Hm-hmm. Each and every one of them is a viable Manipulate materia, though," Cloud explains, taking one of the little shards of yellow and holding it to the light. It glimmers like a jewel. "A little too weak to perform spells with maybe, too weak of use. And when they're this size, they mature so slowly that it's unnoticeable. For magitech circuitry, though…"

"Mair an art than engineerin', indeed," Cait Sith murmurs while they all stare at the tiny yellow shard of materia, and the potential it holds.

"Pretty much," Cloud agrees. "For something like wings powered by magitech, I'll need to shatter some Ice and Fire materia too. Then it's a matter of circuitry, the actual mechanics and selecting just the right pieces for everything. If it works out, though, we'll end up with a magical set of wings that you can move with your mind and magic.

"Fascinating," Reeve whispers behind his monitor. And it is too. It's the spark of creation he's almost forgotten, the sort of innovation that had made him excited about Midgar originally and which now makes him fascinated with the Slums and how wild they are. A little shard of Materia, useless by anyone's standards – except, now, theirs.

"We'll have to wait until they heal and turn spherical, though," Cloud adds. "You can't channel anything through a shard."

Later, they shatter some Ice and Fire materia in similar fashion, Cait Sith getting the pleasure of mashing the first and Aerith the other. Then, with the broken materia set aside to give it time to heal, they get to designing the system that the materia would control and power. In the end, they decide that a hydraulic system would be easiest and while Aerith watches with fascination, Cloud and Cait Sith design the pump and piston systems, with Cait Sith contributing the designs of his own joints into the project.

It takes them weeks to design and months to build a working prototype that is both light, not likely to catch fire, and where the circuitry works in a way that gives the wings the best range of movement. In the end, Aerith dons the pair that can not only stretch out and pull in without anyone touching it, but it can flap, move backward and forward – she can even wave with it, getting better the more she uses it. After a while she tires, of course – the use of the wings uses energy, after all – but judging by the look on her face, it's worth it.

"Th' potential uses fur thes technology ur…" Cait Sith trails away, shaking his head while Reeve tries to write all the ideas he has down as quickly as he can, hardly capable of keeping up with the sheer flood of innovation that the success of the wings started.

"I used to have a magitech motorcycle," Cloud says quietly. "Fenrir had a magitech combustion engine, and it took three fully mastered Fire materia to power it. He was heavy and took so much energy just to get going… But it was the best way to travel that I've ever experienced."

"Whit happened tae it?" Cait Sith asks, curious, because to see a machine like that would be something.

Cloud doesn't answer, and in front of them Aerith spins. "Can I fly with these?" she asks, excited, and the wings spread out like she's about to try, there and then.

"They're too small and you're too heavy, I'm afraid. People aren't designed for flying," Cloud says, smiling. "Although, I've heard rumours of a materia called Float or maybe Levitation, I can't remember which one. It's supposed to let people hover, like they're weightless."

Aerith turns excited eyes to Cait Sith, who quickly puts his paws up in surrender. "I've ne'er heard ay it, missy," he says. "But I'll swatch intae it if it'll make ye canty."

"… I don't know what canty means but that'd be great, thanks!" she says, grinning and then turning to Cloud. "Will you now make yourself better wings?" she asks. "You're all lopsided!"

Cait Sith looks at the man, and he has to admit, she has a point. Reeve isn't sure why Cloud has chosen to only wear full wings on one side and skeletal versions on the other – and why three – but it definitely does look lopsided. Though it's certainly good advertisement for the man's work, making it obvious to anyone who saw him what it is he does, what kind of craftsmanship he's capable of.

Cloud glances backwards at his own wings, the skeletal ones. "I suppose it would look better," the blond man muses, running a hand along the lowest of the three wings, drumming his fingertips against the metal and making it rattle. There is an odd look on his face, a little reluctant and a little uneasy and he sighs. "I guess it's about time for a change."

Reeve has no idea what that means but the words aren't meant for him anyway. For some reason they make Aerith hug the blond man tightly, so the meaning probably runs deeper than he can imagine. He leaves it be – it’s not his business.

6.

Angeal arrives in Midgar on an early train and the weather is horrible – it rains sleet and slush and the moment he steps out of the train, he wishes he had stayed on it for a few minutes longer. The doors close behind him, though, so he hurries forward and into the shelter of the nearby bus stop.

It's not… quite how he imagined it would be, when he'd finally make it. Midgar doesn't look like what he expected it to – though it's probably the rain that makes it seem so… dark. The Buster Sword is heavy on his back, and he constantly worries that it'll cut the straps of his backpack and he's out of money.

Well, he's always out of money, it's really nothing new.

He gets lost on his way to the ShinRa HQ and when he gets there, the people eye him funnily. He holds his back straight and asks reception where the SOLDIER candidates ought to sign in. The woman behind the desk looks at him long and hard and points him to another desk where he is promptly informed that he's too early and that "SOLDIER candidates are expected to deal with their own accommodations until the time they're included in the program." Which means that for the ten days of the candidate trials, he has no place to stay.

"Thanks," he says instead of saying anything else and sighs. He knows enough of Midgar to know that there'd be no place above plate that would take him in, not without a penny to his name. The Slums below… aren't a place he had exactly been hoping to see, but he knows about them, having heard about them from his mother and at least it'd be dry down there.

So he heads out again – the trials won't be for another couple of days and now he curses himself a bit, for wanting to come early. But there's no helping it. He asks and pleads for directions from people who are in too much hurry to get out of the rain to even speak to him, not until one kind soul at a bus stop points him the right way and he finds his way below the plate.

Really, it's not the way he expected his first day in Midgar to go. But he had been determined – he had decided to come early, ahead of Genesis because he had wanted to put a bit of distance between him and his best friend. Genesis isn't bad, he means well, but he’s rich and Angeal… isn't. What Angeal is, is proud, and he had suspected that ShinRa would be stingy and he'd rather be caught dead than mooching off his friend's good will.

The Slums… are not what he expects either. He's heard all about them from his mother, who used to live in Midgar for a while. That they were dirty, basically under city junkyards where those without means eventually ended up. She had told him about the shacks and ramshackle huts built from rubbish and how people begged in every corner.

It's not like that, though. Instead it's like a little underground village – a little stuffy and somewhat awkwardly put together, but there is no one begging and the people don't look hopeless or wretched. They look weird, that's true enough. But that has less to do with them, and more to do with the fact that for some odd reason, they're almost all of them… winged.

For a moment Angeal thinks that maybe he caught hypothermia and is hallucinating, but no, the people below Midgar have wings. He entertains a couple of mad thoughts – of cities of angels, no, of mutants and monster people – before he shakes his head and looks more closely at a nearby woman with beautiful blue wings. She has a harness, running over her shoulders and across her chest, that both brings her cleavage out more, and apparently seems to hold the wings in place.

Well, people did say Midgar has some odd fashion trends. Angeal hadn't expected to find them below the plate, but who was he to judge?

His lack of wings – and the fact that he carries a sword bigger than he himself is – sets him apart instantly. But instead of suspicion, he is met with curiosity until a couple of people approach him to ask him if he needs help. The attentive interest on their faces isn't what he expects – it's not mean or suspicious, just curious.

"Yeah, uh. I'm looking for a place to stay for a couple of nights," he says and grimaces. "I don't… have much money." Or any, really.

"Ah," they say, and smile, and point at a set of large metal doors, across the underground market. "Go through there and past Sector Six, to Sector Five. There's a Church there – when you get there, ask for Cloud."

Angeal thanks them, a little bewildered, and goes. He passes more and more people with wings, women and men, adults and children. Most of them have yellow wings but some have other colours, and some of the wings, he finds to his shock, move. A couple of teenage boys, slightly wealthier judging by their clothing, are having a match of how much dust they can kick up, by flapping the wings. And yet they're not touching them at all, unlike a couple of other children who have their hands fitted along the wings, making the wings move when they move their hands. The two boys however have wings that seem to move by their own volition. How?

He is feeling more bewildered by Midgar than before, when he finally finds the Church. It sits there, somewhat innocuous except for the fact that around it, the area is almost clean. There are chairs and tables and even a couple of makeshift tents and someone has, somehow, planted flowers along the sides.

The air inside is warmer than it is outside. There are people there, sitting on the floor or by the tables, a lot of them working in what looks like a small workshop – making, judging by the looks of all the feathers, wings. They're mostly young; teenagers and kids, and they're doing simple things like sorting cogs and gears or cleaning feathers, some working at dyeing them. Most of them don't even look up as he comes in.

And Angeal is just staring and he knows it's rude, but he can't help it. It looks like the scene of a fairy-tale – and the fact that there is an open patch on the floor, surrounded by a little fence, and inside there are flowers, doesn't help. Wings and flowers in a Church. Maybe he did catch hypothermia.

Then a girl with long brown hair and startlingly white wings dances forward. "Hello!" she greets him and her wings flare up a bit, in an excited feathery wave. "I don't think I've seen you here before. Do you need something?"

"I was… told to ask for Cloud, about a place to stay for a few nights?" Angeal says, staring. She's maybe ten or eleven and the wings make her shine.

"Clouud!" she calls over the general hubbub of the Church. A man in the back looks up from what he had been doing and then approaches them – and all the wings Angeal has seen so far pale in comparison to what he has. For one, his are as white as the girl's, only much, much bigger. And for two… he has three sets. Even whilst folded and tucked tightly in, they look absolutely colossal, too big to be anything but a hindrance, but very, very impressive.

"Yes?" the man asks, and Angeal hastily looks at his face, only to find that it's half hidden under a hood and a fringe of messy blond hair.

"I, uh… My name is Angeal Hewley and I was told I might ask you about a place to stay?" Angeal says, embarrassed and a little intimidated. "I don't have any money and… it would only be for a few days."

The man with six wings is quiet for a moment, considering him – or so Angeal thinks, it's hard to say with his eyes hidden. "A few days?" the man then asks and Angeal can sense the arched eyebrow that accompanies the words.

"Well, uh. Ten days? Er, twelve, actually," Angeal answers awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "I'm uh… I'm taking the SOLDIER candidate trials and before they let me in – or don't – I need to manage my own accommodations."

"We don't want no SOLDIER stooges here!" someone shouts from the side, making Angeal wince a little. "Throw him out on his ass, Cloud!" A few others in the Church join with cheers and jeers and Angeal winces a bit, surprised and uneasy.

"Quiet," the blond man says, his voice soft and not a bit louder than before and it's enough to instil complete silence into the hall. Smiling awkwardly, the blond man holds out a hand. "Come on. I'll show you where you can stay."

While Angeal follows him, the white winged girl sticks out her tongue at the others and berates them for being rude. The six winged man leads Angeal up a wooden staircase, and into what turns out to be a sizable apartment above the hall.

"People usually sleep below – I have bedrolls and blankets for them – but I can't trust them not to harass you," the man, Cloud, says softly. "There's a guest room – so long as you behave, you can stay there. And if you have valuables, they should be okay here, but I have a safe where I keep my materia, if you want more security."

"No, I don't… really have anything but my sword and I'll be carrying that with me. Thank you," Angeal all but stutters, and steps into the guest room. It's not big, or very fancy, but there is a bed and a small table and the sheets look clean. "Do you, uh… Should I do something for…?"

"It's fine," the man says, quirking a small, awkward smile at him. "If you like, you can help down below – we're never out of chores here. But it's not necessary," he turns to leave, to return to the Church hall below. "Dinner will be in a couple of hours, so if you're hungry, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait."

"I don't mind waiting," Angeal says, uneasy with all this charity. "Um. Why are you –?"

"I do this for anybody decent who asks. It's a Church, and charity is rather the idea behind the whole thing. So trust me, I am not giving you any special treatment," the winged man says. "If you wanted a set of wings, however, that would cost you."

"No, I'm… I'm fine. What's with the wings, though?" Angeal asks, unable to help himself.

The man shrugs, the weathers of his impressive wings rustling. "Does it have to have a reason?" he asks. "They mean different things to different people. If you want to know, ask them."

Angeal almost asks him what they mean to him – why three sets – but the man shakes his head. "If you want to, you can join us downstairs and I'll find you something to do. Leave the… sword here, though."

After a moment of hesitation, Angeal leaves his things and the Buster Sword behind and goes downstairs. No one jeers at him this time – though he does get some narrowed looks. He stands around awkwardly for a moment before Cloud comes and asks him if he knows anything about leather or metal working.

"Metal working, yeah," Angeal says. "The sword, my father made it but I helped."

"Well, that's something," Cloud nods and guides him to the corner of the room where there are random bits and pieces of metal, mostly pipes, cylinders and pieces of what look like pistons and a few metal sheets in a stack. Then the man shows him how to clean and polish them and watches for a moment while Angeal does just that, before nodding in satisfaction and leaving him to it.

It's not what Angeal had expected, not at all. Around him the noise of the Church drones comfortably and after a while, Angeal gets lost in the work, polishing piece after piece methodically. He wonders idly where Genesis is – is he already on his way to Midgar? He'd probably stay in a hotel somewhere. Probably best that Angeal doesn't tell him where he's staying at, if they run into each other – and they probably would…

He thinks about the upcoming trials, wondering what they would be like – his mother had assured him he'd pass, but no one could know for sure. Hopefully he would. Hopefully they'd both pass. Or if one of them didn't, then hopefully both of them wouldn't. He doesn't know what he'd do if it was him and not Genesis, or if it was Genesis… but not him. Both scenarios would be awkward, horribly so.

 Angeal isn't sure how long it has been, when he feels a hand on his shoulder and the girl from before is there. "It's time to eat," she says, smiling. "Come on."

They eat outside, on the tables spread across the Church yard. A woman with tiny wings and a warm smile is there, with bucketfuls of food and rough plates and bowls and everyone who works at the Church gets as much as they can eat. It's not quite the sort of food Angeal is used to, not the sort of sweet stuff his own mother makes – actually he isn't quite sure what it is. Soup, maybe. Whatever it is, it's warm and filling and there's a lot of it.

The man with six wings eats standing, talking softly with the woman and Angeal has to wonder, why they're doing it. The whole thing seems like a charity – and he wasn't expecting charity in Midgar.

The girl with white wings sits with him. "It wasn't like this," she says, like she knows what he's thinking.

"What wasn't?"

"This. The Church. Cloud. He was very aloof, a few years back," the girl says and holds up a hand. "I'm Aerith, by the way."

Angeal shakes her small hand, careful not to hold it too tight. "Angeal. Nice to meet you."

"I like your name," she says. "Angeal. You're almost an angel."

He ducks his head, embarrassed, and the girl giggles at him. "We're all trying to be angels here, you know," she says, and shrugs. "And not just with the wings, mind you."

Angeal looks up, at the kids and teenagers all around him, chatting cheerfully with wings on their backs and bowls of food in front of them. "Why?" he asks.

"Cloud sort of stumbles into helping people," Aerith says, shrugging her shoulders, making her wings flap a little. "He fixed the Church but then he wouldn't lock the doors and when kids wandered in, he didn't shoo them out. Instead, he taught them to read and write. And now, when people come, he finds them work to do and if you need it and you're nice… he gets you a place to sleep and he feeds you. Well, my mom does – that's my mom," she adds, pointing at the woman with the tiny wings.

Angeal watches them, the woman and the man. "I didn't think there'd be people like that in Midgar," he says. He isn't sure if there were people like that in Banora either, or anywhere for that matter. Some people had held out a helping hand to his family, every now and then. But usually that was in the form of an apple or second hand clothes, or a little something that might've otherwise been thrown away. A place to sleep, food to eat, work to do… that's something else.

"I think that's because people don't remember how to be nice, anymore," Aerith says and shrugs again. "So we try."

After food they worked some more – though not all of them. Some of the winged teenagers and kids splinter off to play instead, and some curl into blankets in the corner of the Church, to nap. A few of the younger kids gather around Cloud and Aerith by the fenced pit of flowers inside the Church, and together they read – or try to, with the man and the girl guiding the kids through their words.

It's all very bizarre and there is an odd, ethereally homey quality that Angeal can't quite grasp. He looks around and keeps thinking that he's walked into a story book where angels are real and everyone is nice. Well, some of the boys push each other around a bit, and there's some rough housing, but it's still nice.

That night Angeal stays up late, thinking about it all, listening to the drone of voices that comes from the floor beneath him as he lies on the guestroom bed. Then there's a soft hum of Cloud's voice and eventually those who sleep in the Church below quiet down. Sometime later, Angeal hears steps as Cloud walks past his door, never pausing, and the rustle of feathers that still sounds so odd. Somewhere outside the Church there is the hum of machinery but it's a distant white noise and Angeal wants to write a letter to his mother, telling her all about this.

Eventually, he sleeps.

The next day he and some of the winged Slum boys collect material from the junk piles. Sheets of metal, mostly, but whatever fabric they find is collected too, as well as some specific machinery parts the boys think Cloud can use. Angeal ends up carrying most of it, but he doesn't mind. It's good exercise. Later he watches Cloud sort through it all and set some of it aside, giving smiles and appreciative nods to the boys and making them preen – some of them rather literally.

Around lunch time, Cloud and the girl again pass a book between some of the younger kids and listen to them awkwardly read. Angeal listens too, wondering. He had been taught his letters and numbers by his mother – for which he is grateful, because not all in their situation had the luxury of learning things like that. There probably aren't any schools in the Slums, he thinks and wonders if Cloud really is trying to be an angel, with all those wings, all this charity.

It's strange and foreign and he can't help but watch in something like amazement. He really hadn't though there were people like this left, not outside of stories. And it's weird too – what is with the wings? – but maybe it's not a bad sort of weird.

The third day, Angeal heads to the city above, with the Buster Sword at his back and his paperwork in hand, and the SOLDIER trials start and he doesn't have the time to think about the Slums or the Church or Cloud. Instead it's all hard physical labour, running and lifting weights and fighting throughout the whole day, while some already minted SOLDIERs watch and judge him and the other candidates with their eyes shining with Mako.

Genesis is there too, with a new sword in hand, but they don't have time for more than a nod at each other between all the trials.

"Where are you staying?" Genesis asks, once the day is over and they're sent away, to return tomorrow for another bout of the same – if not something worse.

"With some people," Angeal shrugs, and he feels a bit ashamed that he can't quite tell Genesis about the Church and the people who had taken him in, no questions asked. Genesis would probably be horrified, or amused – and that would be worse than him being horrified. If he knew, he'd offer Angeal a place to stay at wherever he himself was staying, though, and trying to refuse it would be awkward and it would just hurt them both. The Church is… not bad. It's poor, a bit over crowded, strange, but not bad at all.

"I'm fine," Angeal says when the redhead looks at him dubiously. Angeal smiles and hoists the Buster Sword over his shoulders and to his back. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Sometimes he wished it didn't matter to him so much, being honourable.

It's late when he gets back to the Church, and the others living there are outside, playing with a ball or just mucking about. Cloud welcomes him back with a glance from the work he's doing with a skeletal set of wing frames, not yet covered with feathers, the mechanisms all visible. Beside him there is a black and white cat toy that moves, but Angeal is beyond questioning these things now.

"How did it go?" Cloud asks, somehow knowingly as he hands the wing frame to the cat who pokes around the cogs curiously.

"It was fine. I'll be stiff tomorrow, but it was fine," Angeal sighs, rubbing at his neck.

The man looks him over and nods. "Go have a hot bath," he says. "Stretch before and after and you might be fine."

Angeal hesitates a bit at that. "Is it okay if I use that much water?"

The man shrugs. "I steal my water from the city above – everyone in the Slums does. So it's fine."

"…Oh. I… didn't know that."

The man quirks a smile. "And you still don't, do you?" he asks meaningfully and then turns to the cat and the wing frame. "Go bathe, Angeal."

"SOLDIER candidate?" the cat asks while Angeal turns to head up to the apartment. "He has th' swatch. Ah didne ken ye catered tae their lot, thocht. Doesnae seem loch yer type, Cloud."

"Doesn't he?" the man answers distractedly and Angeal's heart skips a beat and he nearly stumbles on the stairs. The two don't seem to notice and as he quickly resumes his ascent to the second floor, Cloud speaks again. "How's the conductivity? Does it seem like it's stuttering to you?" the man asks, and their voices grow too quiet to hear.

Angeal takes his time bathing – and he does feel a little better afterwards. Later he joins the others in a meal and no one looks at him funny – a few even ask him how the trials went, what they were like. Aerith brings him a cup of something hot that might be tea and it's nice, all of it. That night Cloud watches him stretch his stiff muscles awkwardly before showing him a better way to go about it – and it makes sense that he knows, with the physique he has he must be a fighter too.

"It'll still hurt," the man says, watching as Angeal reaches for his own ankles, the backs of his knees aching. "But if you can still move through it, you'll be better off than most of the kids who try their hand at the candidate trials."

"How do you know?" Angeal asks, awkward and curious all at once, but Cloud doesn't answer.

For the next few days it's like that, the days Angeal spends in trials and the evenings he tries to ease out of them, his body stiff and hurting and exhilarated. And it's nice, to have someone there – even though he doesn't know Cloud at all, the man is always willing to listen, even when Angeal for a moment almost breaks down to complain about the unfair way he had been treated during one match where the other candidate had almost taken his eye out. The winged man never tells him to get over it, or shut up. Of course, he doesn't console or sympathise either, not quite – he just listens, and that's probably better.

When on the day before the ninth day of the trials Angeal almost can't get up from bed, he hurts too much, Cloud comes to fetch him himself and Angeal isn't sure if he imagines it, but he's pretty sure the man casts healing spells on him.

"Keep at it," the man says, half dragging him away from the Church and through the sectors and to the passage where he can get to above plate. "You've gotten this far and you're almost through. Just fight through it – because that's what they're looking to see, if you can keep at it."

And so Angeal keeps at it, despite shaking arms that can't lift any more weights and legs that feel like they're made of nothing but ache. The SOLDIERs watching narrow their eyes – but Angeal isn't the only shaky one there. A few of the candidates hadn't even bothered to come at all, and Genesis shakes too, worse even than Angeal does.

The tenth day, they welcome those who remain to SOLDIER. They're still just cadets, until they have their physical exams and a few more tests under their belts, but it's still a triumph. When he tells Cloud about it later, the man doesn't look surprised at all – he just nods and smiles, bids him good luck and tells him to come back any time he wants. There are always chores to be done and space for an extra bedroll, somewhere in the Church.

For some reason the easy acceptance, the smile, the welcome back – all of it – makes the triumph seem twice as sweet as it might've been before. There is something about Cloud's quiet, understated approval that makes Angeal thirsty for more.

Midgar is a strange place, and so are the Slums. Strange and somehow backwards but… it's not as bad as it had seemed, when Angeal had stepped out of the train.

7.

The day Sephiroth officially meets Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley, is an otherwise rather unremarkable day. He's training in one of the larger training rooms, alone and, aside from the watchful cameras forever aimed his way, private. He's tired and annoyed and he wants to go out and fight something. Anything would've done, a robot, a monster, a training dummy, but he's not allowed access to any of those at the moment – because the higher-ups had decided that he needs the time off.

Being back in Midgar after a good five years in Wutai is… not really working for him. He can't relax in the ShinRa HQ – it's too cold, too dry, too quiet. He misses the sounds of his men, SOLDIERs and infantrymen alike. He misses the smell of gunpowder and metal and oil. He misses the smell of Wutai’s flowers. And he misses the action most of all, the hard physical labour, and feeling like he's doing something.

Here he's just hung out to dry, set aside. An instrument too blunt and too sharp all at once – too terrifying to have the right impact, anymore. The Wutai fighters revere him almost more than the members of ShinRa's military do, these days. They call him a Demon, and it's a sign of respect – and respect is not what ShinRa wants. What they want is to inflict fear and horror on the sort of scale that makes men go mad and he doesn't cut it anymore.

So he's here, sent back home to sit on the sidelines, his job taken over by mortar launchers and airships and their bombing campaigns, by burning towns and villages and the sort of mindless horror only systematic destruction can cause. The war has gone from the elegant sword and political play to mindless slaughter as ShinRa tries to force Wutai into a surrender that has none of the art of war they believe in. They want Wutai to give up in the midst of hopeless, mad fear, rather than respect.

Sephiroth has never found ShinRa to be anything but hideous, but he's never quite been so repulsed by its tactics than now. Along the five year campaign, he's gotten villages to surrender at the tip of his sword with minimal blood spilled, with the best of their swordsmen meeting him in single combat and handing their blades over in honourable defeat. The grace of it had inspired him to take up a Wutai sword rather than a ShinRa standard broadsword – an odachi, Masamune, a gift from a captured high ranking Wutai general – and he hasn't regretted it since.

And now it's all for nothing. Now the Masamune fights only air in ShinRa's training rooms where no one uses such blades and he feels useless.

He is guiding Masamune through a series of katas, when they enter – first the redhead, and then the larger boy with black hair. They're both SOLDIER Seconds judging by their uniforms, and Sephiroth very nearly tells them to go to hell and leave him be, but then he sees their blades.

They both use non-standard swords.

"Um. Hi," the larger Second Class says, with a sword on his back that's almost bigger than he is, and he is not small by any means. "The instructors told us to find you."

"And?" Sephiroth asks, easing out of the kata and lowering Masamune.

The redhead smiles, eyeing him like a hawk. "It so happens that we kick everyone's asses around here and it's gotten fairly boring fighting him all the time," he points at the black haired boy. "Not very good for improvement, you see, fighting the same opponent all the time. So they sent us here, to see you. Sephiroth, the Hero."

Sephiroth only barely manages not to scoff at that. He prefers the name the Wutai samurai gave him – a hero, after all, can be anyone, but only he is the Demon of Wutai. Annoyed, he runs his palm along Masamune's blade and then slides it to his side, as if into a sheath. "Your names?"

They introduce themselves – Genesis with a sort of theatrical flair, Angeal with an exasperated smile. Sephiroth waits for them but they say nothing more until he snaps at them, "Well?" all the while holding Masamune at the ready. "You're here to fight. So let's fight."

Genesis takes the opening greedily, with an arrogance Sephiroth has all but forgotten in his battles with the samurai – ShinRa's warriors employ a whole different set of tactics. But despite all the arrogance, Genesis isn't bad with his rapier, not at all, though he wields it with a certain, somewhat unnecessary flair, he still has skill.

Angeal, though, is a different thing. He doesn't pull his massive blade from his back, but takes one of the standard broadswords – and he's good. Not artistically or fluently good, but he is practical in his sword use, and what he lacks in elegance, he makes up in surprising speed and strength.

They're good opponents, both of them. Better than Sephiroth has seen in ShinRa's ranks in years.

"So," Angeal says once they're done – or more precisely, when he and Genesis, only Second Class SOLDIERs as they are, have to pause to take a breathing break. "They say you're back for good, from Wutai."

"I guess I am," Sephiroth scowls.

"I suppose once you've already made it into the ranks of Heroes, there isn't much else left to do," Genesis smirks, sort of derisive.

"They decided to use… cruder means to fight the war," Sephiroth scowls, examining Masamune's blade. It's unscratched, naturally, but he still makes sure.

"Well, in that case, you'll be available for other spars, won't you?" Genesis asks and even Angeal looks hopeful. "Because, seriously, we can't get a good fight out of anybody around here and it's getting sad."

Sephiroth considers it and concedes after a moment. It was definitely better to fight them than air. Not as good as fighting for a purpose, but… it's something. "They're not giving me missions yet, so I'm here most of the evenings," he says. "Come find me whenever you need to be taken down a peg."

They find him almost every evening. At first it's just sword play, but Genesis is experimenting more and more with materia and soon Sephiroth is parrying spells as well as blades. Sometimes he manages to coax Angeal to fight him along with Genesis, but most of the time Angeal's brand of honour gets in the way. They're a weird pair of SOLDIER Seconds – soon to be promoted to Firsts, judging by their skills – but the more time Sephiroth spends with them, the less he minds it.

They're, somehow… familiar. Maybe it's the way they too prefer their own style of blades – though Angeal never uses his. Maybe it's the strength, leaps and bounds ahead of everyone but each other. Maybe it's the odd sense of individuality. SOLDIERs are a somewhat conformal unit, but Angeal and Genesis don't conform. Half of the time Genesis doesn't even wear the uniform.

Every Sunday, though, Angeal doesn't come. It's the usual day off for most of the SOLDIERs and most of them head out to drink and revel in those bars that cater to SOLDIER appetites, so Sephiroth isn't particularly interested. Angeal doesn't quite seem the type though – Genesis, he thinks, is much more likely to go out to indulge in things like that.

"Oh, he doesn't," Genesis rolls his eyes when Sephiroth points it out. "He knows some people down in the Slums who he goes to see whenever he can. Don't ask me why – you wouldn't catch me there, not for anything. But Angeal is a bit weird, every now and then."

"Slums?" Sephiroth asks, a little unsure – of course he knows about them, when he was much younger he had even visited a couple of times with older SOLDIERs for some minor monster extermination. The place hadn't seemed particularly interesting then and he can't imagine Angeal visiting the place willingly. For all that Genesis is the spoiled brat, Angeal is the one who acts like… well, with poise and a certain class that occasionally reminds Sephiroth of the Wutai samurai. Honourable Angeal and the Slums… don’t add up.

"Well… you know," Genesis says, uneasy. "Angeal gets paid as much as me, now, but he wasn't… I mean. His family is sort of…"

"Poor?" Sephiroth asks bluntly. "But he's a SOLDIER now, he gets paid. Why go to the Slums?"

"He's loyal too. I suppose he made friends with the unfortunate and the downtrodden," Genesis shrugs and sheathes his sword. "You'll have to ask him. He won't tell me – embarrassed, I suppose."

So, the next time he sees Angeal without Genesis, Sephiroth asks him about it. And the embarrassment and unease is really plainly obvious on Angeal's face, as he all but squirms under the question. "You know I don't really care," Sephiroth points out. "About wealth and all that. I was raised in a steel box – none of it means anything to me."

"It's not that," Angeal sighs. "It's just. It's very different, down there – I go there more for the atmosphere than the people – well. I suppose it's a bit for the people too," he murmurs, and looks away and if Sephiroth hadn't known any better, he would've said he was blushing of all things. "It’s nothing like here. It's… it's homey."

Sephiroth waits for him to continue and he doesn't so eventually he just comments, "I have no idea what homey is like," which for some reason makes Angeal look at him guiltily.

"Well… " Angeal says, thoughtful. "I guess I could take you with me, if you wanted to see."

The next Sunday, Angeal tells Sephiroth to tie his hair back and then hands him a nondescript hoodie. "You're famous, after all," he says. "Down there you wouldn't get any peace from the people. You can take your sword, they don't mind it too much when I bring mine, but you probably won't need it. Cloud keeps the place pretty free of monsters."

"Cloud?"

"I'll introduce you. Come on."

So they head out –and it's strange, the difference wearing such a simple disguise makes. Sephiroth has to grant that usually he is rather easy to spot, with his preferred jacket and long hair, and no one would expect him in a hoodie, not really. Without harassment or even any great interest from the people passing by, they make it through Midgar and to the Slums which… are nothing like Sephiroth remembered them being.

"What?" he asks, confused, at the people in the ramshackle market below Sector Seven. All around them the people, who otherwise look perfectly normal, have… wings… on their backs. The majority of them are yellow and simple, but there are green and blue ones, reds and a couple of blacks – and some rather impressive looking mixes of red and yellow, or all the colours. Some, on the other hand, look bleached, the feathers white, some with the tiniest hint of colour.

"Ah, yeah. There's a… well. It's a thing here, the wings," Angeal says. "I'd tell you not to stare, but people like being stared at. They're not real, though – and some of them are mechanical, so don't worry about it if they move."

As they walk through the market, some of the people wave at Angeal in greeting – and some of them, much to Sephiroth's astonishment, wave their wings. It's obvious that Angeal goes through here often, and the people are used to him – and if they find Sephiroth interesting at all, they don't show it.

Angeal leads him away from the market and through another sector, weaving through the piles of junk. There are a few people about, picking at the piles or just lounging about, and each and every one of them seems to have a set of wings on their backs.

"Why do they have the wings? Can they fly with them?" Sephiroth asks. He'd seen some weird fashion trends in his time – going from Midgar to Wutai had been a bit of a culture shock, as was coming back. But wings, that's new. And they looked like a lot of effort had gone into their construction too.

"It's different for everybody," Angeal says, shrugging, "For some they're a symbol of freedom or hope, I guess. For others they're a fashion statement or decoration, others wear theirs as a hobby. For some they're a sign of unity and community. And a lot of them…" he chuckles sheepishly. "Their way of sticking it to the man, I guess."

"Sticking… it to the man?" Sephiroth asks, confused. He misses the meanings of sayings often and doesn't know all the idioms people use and this is a wholly new one for him.

"Someone told me it's a great, pretty fuck you to Midgar," Angeal says, embarrassed. "And I guess it makes sense. The people down here are cut off from the sky, but instead of sucking it up… they build themselves wings."

Sephiroth shakes his head, not quite getting it, but willing to let it be. Angeal leads him through the Sixth Sector Slums and all the way to the Fifth Sector which is rather clean, for some reason. There is junk there too, big piles of it, but… not quite as big as in Sector Six.

"There," Angeal points. "The Church, that's where I go." Then he heads forward, towards a surprisingly well designed and well-kept building, that's surrounded by… flowers. There are also benches and tables and someone has set up some sort of street lights around it. Sephiroth isn't sure if he's imagining it or not, but it looks like there's grass growing around the building.

There is a brown haired girl sitting on the steps with a couple of younger girls, and it looks like she's reading to the other girls. All of them, Sephiroth notices, are wearing wings on their backs.

 Angeal approaches them, waving. "Hello, Aerith."

"Angeal, welcome back," the girl with the book says, smiling – and for a moment Sephiroth wonders if she's the one Angeal comes to see… but the girl must be five, six years younger than Angeal – maybe twelve at most. She is pretty, he supposes, and the white wings on her back, which she waves at Angeal in greeting, suit her perfectly.

"You brought a friend," the girl says, looking at Sephiroth curiously. "Is he a SOLDIER too?"

"Yeah," Angeal nods. "Where's Cloud? I want to introduce him."

"He's at the smithy, in the back," the girl says and smiles. "He has a bit of a crowd though. He's working on it."

"Oh," Angeal says and grins. In a move that leaves Sephiroth all but speechless, the SOLDIER Second grabs his hand and then drags him away from the girls, around the building. "Come on, come on. This we’ve got to see."

Behind the Church there is an area that's warded with some fences. Inside it, the ground has been covered by stone tiles and pieces of asphalt, probably to harden it and make it level. Most of the space inside the fence has been taken up by strange looking machinery and what look like ovens and there, in the middle of it all, is a man with the largest set – sets – of wings Sephiroth has seen so far. Six in total, all of them massive and perfectly white. They adorn the back of a man in a sleeveless hoodie, his face covered by a protective mask as he pounds on a red, enormous piece of metal with a massive hammer. Each hit sends sparks flying, and the crowd of winged boys and girls watching ooh and aah in appreciation at every shower of sparks.

"That's Cloud," Angeal says while nudging at a couple of boys to make room for them at the fence. "He runs the Church – he also makes all the wings."

"Well, not all of 'em, we help," one of the Slum boys says proudly. "Cloud jest does the magic bits these days."

Sephiroth says nothing, watching the man as he works on the metal. For all that the piece of metal is as big as Angeal's Buster Sword, Sephiroth knows it's going to be a sword. The fact that the man is capable of working with something of its size interests him more than what he's making, though. The hammer looks too big for anyone but a SOLDIER to lift, as does the metal that the man's working on, and yet he handles them with skilled, practiced ease.

"Isn't he worried about the wings catching the sparks?" Sephiroth finally asks, because the feathery constructions, so big and so close, must be an enormous fire hazard.

"He never takes 'em off," a boy pipes up.

"He hasn't caught fire yet," another says, laughing. "That'd be a sight!"

The man, Cloud, eventually puts the hammer down, lifts the protective mask up and then examines the blade. Apparently satisfied, he turns and dips the enormous blade into a vat of oil – which causes a couple of tongues of flame to shoot up, much to the delight of the spectators. Nothing but the hot metal catches fire, though, and even that is easily handled by the man as soon as the blade is cooled down enough.

After setting the blade aside, the man then turns to look at them and notices Angeal – though how he sees anything, with the hood down and hair covering his eyes, Sephiroth isn't sure. "Angeal," he says, his voice quiet but audible. "I see you brought a guest."

"He wanted to see where I go – it's alright, right?" Angeal asks, with uncharacteristic hesitation.

The man says nothing for a moment, taking a rag from a nearby table and wiping sweat from his face and somehow Sephiroth is absolutely sure that the man is staring at him and knows who he is too. "It's fine," the man says and motions with his hand at the crowd. "Show's over. Off with you lot."

While the Slum children dash off, some to play, others heading into the building, the man steps to the door of the fence and then out. Then, in one of the most impressive feats Sephiroth has ever seen, the man stretches. He lifts his arms up and behind him the wings spread out, up and to the side, taking an enormous amount of space for a moment and if the man had leaped into the air, Sephiroth wouldn't have been surprised at all.

Beside him, Sephiroth hears Angeal’s sharp inhale and while the man tucks the impressive wings back in, Sephiroth glances at his fellow SOLDIER. There's a hint of red, on the back of Angeal's neck, on his ears.

"So," the man says, apparently not noticing Angeal's reaction. "You two going to be staying for long? Because I could use someone who can do some heavy lifting."

Angeal swallows and turns to Sephiroth. "I usually stick around for a few hours, helping," he explains. "With a SOLDIER's strength I can do a bit more than most around here, so…" he trails away and shrugs. "If you don't want to, that's fine, I guess."

"I don't mind," Sephiroth finds himself answering. He has taken Angeal for the rather stiff and rigid aloof type – though beside Genesis everyone would've seemed aloof. And of course, everyone's always rigid and stiff around Sephiroth, even his own men had never let their guard down around him. Here, though, here Angeal is obviously more relaxed. In more ways than one – and no one's ever let Sephiroth see that.

The man, Cloud, looks between them. "Well then," he says. "I trust you'll show your friend the ropes, Angeal?"

"Yeah," the SOLDIER Second nods and satisfied, Cloud leads them to a pile of what looks like rusting cars which he wants moved out of the way. Sephiroth eyes them dubiously – with a SOLDIER's strength he supposes they can move them, but…

Angeal though just grins. "I get the best muscle training here, I swear," he says and Sephiroth has to grant that it does seem more interesting – not to mention more productive – to move cars rather than pumping iron at the gym.

So they turn to the cars and Cloud leaves them to it, and with Angeal pointing out what to do and how, they start pushing and hauling the rotting remains of various sorts of vehicles out of the way. "So," Sephiroth says as they push one piece of junk that has only three wheels and none of them with tires left. "Cloud, huh?"

"Um," Angeal says and looks away, embarrassed.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before, trust me. I've been in the army longer than you, you know," Sephiroth says dryly. "It gets mighty lonely on the war front. Or so the men said, whenever I happened upon them in compromising positions."

"Happened upon them in compromising positions?" Angeal laughs, breathless and shocked and Sephiroth ducks his head, pleased. It's not every day he makes someone laugh – actually, it might very well be the first time. Angeal, not noticing, just shakes his head. "Is that Sephiroth-speak for catching them with their pants down?"

"More or less," Sephiroth admits and Angeal laughs louder.

"Please, don't… tell Genesis though," the SOLDIER Second says after a while. "I'm not sure he'd understand."

"Genesis? If there's anyone who would understand, I think it'd be him," Sephiroth points out. Of all three of them, Genesis would be probably the best candidate for understanding, actually.

Angeal grimaces though. "Maybe. But I want to tell him myself and, you know," he glances backwards, towards the Church. "The likelihood of anything really happening here is kind of… pathetically small. I'm not sure if Cloud even… anyway. Please don't tell Genesis."

"I wasn't going to, it's not my business," Sephiroth says.

They work for a moment in silence, pushing the remains of cars and other vehicles out of the way, idly wondering what the man intended to do with the space. "So," Sephiroth says thoughtfully, thinking back. "The thing he was forging. You seemed pretty excited about it."

"Cloud's making a magitech sword," Angeal says, excited. "Magitech is the thing with the wings – they move pretty much by magic and it takes materia and circuitry and honestly, I don't really understand the whole thing. Anyway, he's making a sword like that too."

"A… moving sword?" Sephiroth asks and has a hard time keeping the amusement from his voice.

"No. A fusion sword."

8.

Unlike most who joined ShinRa, Kunsel read the fine print before he signed the contracts and that's why his name is Kunsel, rather than what he was actually born with. Though, of course, he had been a bit more suspicious about the contract than most SOLDIER would-be's are – because unlike most SOLDIER recruits who rushed head first into the candidate trials and, hopefully, into training, Kunsel was actually recruited.

Granted, he was recruited for the Turks originally. And maybe he still is, because when the Turks notice you and decide that there is something interesting about you, that is that. You're on those lists somewhere, you're a small dot in a very large network and you're either part of it or under it, it doesn't matter. Once a Turk, always a Turk – even if it's never official. That's how it works.

Kunsel doesn't mind it at all, though. He might be on those lists, one foot in the Turks and thus one foot in the grave, and somewhere there is a file that reads, "eidetic memory, high IQ, too smart to be left alone" but being in those lists means that he can also use them.

He likes data, he likes knowing things about places and events and people – the trickier the fact, the more secretive the bit of information, the better. And the Turks like him too, in their way: he is their not so subtle spy in the ranks of SOLDIER.

So, he knows and learns and investigates things, boring and meaningless and interesting things and things other SOLDIERs haven't even heard of, or even thought of. Like what's the name of the President's fourth cousin twice removed who had been recently assassinated for security reasons – or the fact that the President even has family other than his wife and son. He knows more about what the heads of ShinRa's different departments are doing than he really should – like he knows Heidegger has six sons and one daughter, all of them bastards, and that Scarlet has a sister and niece she spoils rotten and that Palmer doesn't have any family left, but he's engaged.

He knows that Tuesti runs circles around the three of them and that Urban Development has been working on some ground breaking technology for the last few years. The fact that Tuesti is keeping such a tight lid on it has made the Turks very curious and the man's security status had tripled in the last two years – the man nowadays has a Turk shadow every moment of every day. And yet they still don't know what the man is working on, only that power generation is one of the things.

There are whispers about a new type of engine, that doesn't run on Mako – or any other known energy source. But for all the digging Kunsel himself has done, that is all even he knows – though he did find out that Tuesti has a thing for cat toys.

Kunsel knows about the Head of the Science Department too, things he doesn't really want to know. He knows where SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth was born – Nibelheim – and that he's actually Professor Hojo's son, for one. And he knows that when he was fourteen Hojo killed his own father with a pair of scissors and was found performing an autopsy on the man. He doesn't know why the man was hired by ShinRa but he knows that he wouldn't have liked being the scientists in Hojo's way, when the man was making his way up the ladder.

He knows more about SOLDIER than he knows about the civilians of the company though – the military side of the company is more interesting anyway, Kunsel thinks. Especially considering how little it knows of itself – the company, it seems, goes out of its way to keep its military in the dark about the facts pertaining to itself, especially where SOLDIER is concerned. That's why the contracts have so much small print, and why the SOLDIER recruits were given an extremely limited amount of time to read them before signing.

But Kunsel knows, he's found out. He knows that SOLDIER life expectancy is twenty five years and the word, life expectancy, is literal in this case; only one SOLDIER – a Second Class, a trainer who used to live in Junon – had lived past it. And he knows that not a single SOLDIER will ever have children – a side effect of the Mako, the sperm pretty much kills the egg, or just mutates it beyond any feasible chance of the resulting thing living. Kunsel also knows that Professor Hojo once destroyed a laboratory over it, because it meant that no SOLDIER would be able to pass his mutated genes onto a second generation.

Meaning that Sephiroth would never have kids. Though Kunsel doubts very much that it has anything to do with the Professor himself getting grandchildren – which, in and of itself, is a disturbing thought.

Kunsel also knows that the very best First Class SOLDIERs are pressured to take on pupils for some extensive personalised training, because they're in their twenties now, which means that the company is likely to get less than five more years of service out of them, if even that. Only Angeal Hewley has bent to the will of the superiors yet, taking on a Third Class named Zack Fair.

Kunsel likes knowing things. Before he runs into said Zack Fair who is looking at a hand drawn map of the SOLDIER quarters in apparent confusion, he hasn't had much chance to share what he knows though – aside from the occasional reports he haphazardly shoots at the Turks. He's not one to pass up a chance to learn more, though, so he approaches the bewildered Third Class.

"Looking for something?" he asks.

"Yeah, I'm lost?" the Third Class more asks than says, laughing and waving the paper like a flag of surrender. "I'm looking for room forty slash oh seven and I can't find it."

"Well, you're in the wrong corridor – they're numbered, see? This is the fifth. Go back to the elevators and go left this time, corridors zero through four are that way."

The Third Class grins at him, wide and bright and somehow almost unbearably energetic. "Thanks man!" and apparently that is enough for Zack Fair to decide that he and Kunsel will be friends, because later, whenever Zack sees him, he makes a beeline for him.

Not that Kunsel minds. Zack is not… the brightest bulb in the box, no, but he's extremely likeable, optimistic, always willing to try and just generally good in a way a lot of SOLDIERs aren't. SOLDIER as a whole attracts a certain personality type – mainly, guys with chips on their shoulders who have something to prove – and it tends to lead to a lot of egos and flaunting and boasting. And, naturally, the daily brawls in the corridors and some vicious wrestling matches in the training rooms.

Zack, though, if he has something to prove, it is first to himself, next to Angeal and then to absolutely no one. He works hard, harder than most – and Kunsel can see why that would catch the eye of someone like Angeal, one of the toughest task masters in the service. But he also goofs off all the time, and maybe some of it is intentional but a lot of it is accidental or incidental and when people laugh at Zack, he doesn't care. No, he revels in it, goofs off harder than before, just to make people laugh louder.

Zack's gonna make First, Kunsel decides. He soaks up Mako like a sponge and trains the same way people breathe and he never seems to stop or sit still. The energy he exudes is exhausting and exhilarating all at once. The nickname the Third soon gets is well deserved.

So Kunsel doesn't shake the friendship off the way he used to, before ShinRa and SOLDIER when he used knowledge like currency and wrote papers for his friends so that they'd have a reason to interact with him. He watches from the side on how Zack blooms under Angeal’s guidance – which probably has a lot to do with the way Angeal steers him away from endless sets of squats to more useful forms of training. Within six months Zack makes Second and it surprises exactly no one – except perhaps Zack himself.

Angeal is much more interesting than Zack, though. He's been on the Turk watch lists since he had been a Third, and sure, Sephiroth and Genesis are flagged too – they're just too powerful and potentially dangerous to be left unsupervised – but Angeal is different. There is a special flag on Angeal's file that has always interested Kunsel.

On Sundays, if Angeal's in Midgar and then goes off the clock, he is on Black Out. Meaning, no one should follow him and if anybody sees him, they’re supposed to be blind to him. No matter what the man does, no one reports it because on Sundays if Angeal is in Midgar he stops existing for the day.

It isn't, precisely, unusual. The President has several Black Out moments each week – when the meetings he goes to, people he sees, things he does aren't something the company needs to know. Some other high-up figures of the company have them too – Department Head Scarlet usually takes a couple of weekends every month on Black Out, as did Heidegger and Palmer. Hojo is on Black Out about twenty five percent of the time. But Angeal?

Angeal is a good SOLDIER, a great Commander – but only that. He isn't a Department Head or politically powerful and he has no true standing within the company, no influence outside the military. The Black Out, which is all but scheduled, is very unusual for someone of his standing.

Kunsel has had many theories about it, none of which he ever writes down or pursues. Angeal, Sephiroth and Genesis are a class of SOLDIER all on their own – the difference between the three of them and the rest of the First Class SOLDIERS is about the same as between First and Third Class SOLDIERs. They are too strong to be normal. And Kunsel has theories about that too – Sephiroth himself is all but walking and talking proof that ShinRa is perfectly capable of rearing SOLDIERs right from birth.

So, theory number one is that on Sundays, Angeal has his specialised treatments to maintain his higher level of strength and stamina. It is a solid enough theory, except for one thing. Genesis has no such Black Outs and neither does Sephiroth, so why would Angeal alone need them?

Theory number two is that Angeal is like Kunsel, working for two departments. But that makes less sense than theory one, because it is too obvious, too blatant, too noticeable. If it were the Turks, they'd know better. If it was someone else, the Black Out probably wouldn't be necessary. So that's not it.

Theories number three to seven includes various Science Department related notions that Kunsel has been juggling with for a while now. The number of secret science experiments the company has going is… well, probably no one is certain how high that number is. Angeal could very well be taking part in one of them – he and Genesis are oddly close to Hollander, who all but monopolises their physicals and Mako Treatments. So maybe…

Then one day, a Sunday, Kunsel takes time to get out of HQ and get some air, and he sees Angeal. The man is out of uniform and the shirt and nondescript trousers look strange on him. He doesn't notice Kunsel – who is in civvies too – and so walks past him without pausing, past him and towards one of the most used walk ways leading below plate.

He heads for the Slums.

If Kunsel was someone else, if he had even a bit of Zack's boldness, he might've followed the First Class SOLDIER. But he isn't and he doesn't, he knows better, and instead just watches how Angeal makes his way down the stairs with the practiced ease of someone who knows every single one of them, has walked them dozens of times.

Kunsel knows things about life below plate too. He doesn't go there, because the nuances of the Slum folk's lives are haphazard and refuse to organise into lines he can quantify. The wings… do not make sense to him. Objectively, he understands the symbolism and that sometimes fashion just doesn't make sense, but somehow there's more to it than symbolism or fashion. There's a hint of faith in them, and that's not something he has had much experience with, or something he's comfortable with.

He likes to know things. Feeling things is more Zack's thing, than his.

But for all that, he doesn't know what there might be below the plate that puts Angeal on Black Out every Sunday. And that's probably for the best – the Turks have damn good reasons for doing what they do, after all, and he's enough of a Turk to know when not to stick his nose into something.

Zack is a different thing, though. "I don't get it. I mean, Sunday is the perfect day for training – there're no missions and almost everyone is off base, so pretty much all the training rooms are open," he complains. "I don't get why Sundays are off anyway."

"ShinRa did a study about it, in its early days – about employee turnout and productivity and stuff like that," Kunsel says, shrugging. "People who work every day, for months on end, start losing their edge pretty quickly. Also the rate of suicide was pretty high back then, and there were a lot of mental disorders, and so on. So the study was conducted, and it was found that people needed a bit of rest and relaxation every now and then. So, everyone has a standard day off every week, and they're strongly encouraged to take it easy. Sunday is just the day off for most SOLDIERs, unless there are emergencies."

"Hmph," Zack harrumphs and goes back to doing squats.

Zack doesn't really stop complaining about Angeal taking Sundays off, and Kunsel doesn't tell him where Angeal goes – it's not his business and in the end he doesn't really know anything, and nor does he want to. Zack finds himself something else to do on Sundays – which usually involves running around with SOLDIER fanclubs of all things – so it's probably fine.

Then the Mass Desertion happens.

Before that, Kunsel's interest in SOLDIER First Class Genesis has been only superficial – he has never met the man, since SOLDIERs with high magical abilities are usually kept busy and in the end Genesis had been sent to Wutai, to end the war. He has heard about him and of course he knows what everyone else knows – and maybe a little bit extra, though that's more in relation to Angeal and Sephiroth, than about Genesis himself.

He knows that Genesis and Angeal are from the same village, though, that they're old friends. They became Thirds together and trained most of their career all the way to Firsts together. He also knows that sometimes, the two of them drag Sephiroth with them and then wreck the hologram training room for fun.

But then the Crimson Commander goes and deserts and takes a good chunk of the SOLDIERs serving under him with him. What had been ShinRa's intention of using shock and awe tactics to force surrender out of Wutai once and for all ends up in complete disaster and in a single night, SOLDIER numbers are cut by a good forty percent. For a while, even Kunsel is stunned by that.

Because SOLDIER desertion is supposed to be impossible. It's in the contract – and not even in the fine print. Without their regular Mako treatments, SOLDIER physiology can't keep up with the enhancements and they will begin to rapidly deteriorate. A SOLDIER that is just mere days behind his treatments will grow weaker, get sick, start to hallucinate. Two weeks later he dies, usually of brain infarction, though heart failures are common.

Mako deficiency is the most common cause of death, among SOLDIERs.

Kunsel knows it's specifically engineered – it is the failsafe ShinRa has on its super soldiers that should make it impossible for them to ever turn against the company that created them. And everyone who is SOLDIER knows it – it's an open secret. It should work too – it has worked for years, for almost two decades. For one SOLDIER to desert, well, it has happened, and they suffered the price for it. For forty percent of all of them, over a hundred in total?

It's complete insanity.

Unless, of course… they have some way of getting Mako treatments outside the company. Which in and of itself presents some interesting points, which Kunsel turns idly in his head. Like how and by whom and where, because it takes a special sort of Mako, treated in special sorts of ways and the exact formula is one of ShinRa's more highly guarded secrets. Which would indicate that Genesis and his cohorts have either stolen that information, or… someone from the science department is working with them.

Kunsel knows he need not report that notion to anyone, though – the whole company is buzzing with activity, everyone is on high alert, everyone is working at it, and everyone is investigating. The Turks probably have the same ideas about the whole thing he has. No need to point out the obvious.

Instead he watches Angeal and, the rare chances he sees the man, Sephiroth. Watches how their fists clench, how their shoulders tense – how the Turks subtly shadow them, whenever they're out of the building. Always… except for Sundays, when Angeal still stops existing for the day.

Right up to the point where he too deserts.

9.

It's a disheartened Zack Fair that returns from the useless, stupid, horrible mission at Banora. Despite Lazard's hopes and Sephiroth's fears, Angeal hadn't even been there. All that there had been was a deranged Genesis spouting his stupid lyrical nonsense and death and confusion and useless destruction and Zack just wants to break things, break them just as senselessly as ShinRa had fire bombed the beautiful town for something that hadn't been its fault.

He wants to stick a sword in Genesis the Crimson Commander, and twist. And usually he doesn't like that sort of stuff, despite the fact that he's been going on SOLDIER missions for years now and killed more men than he ever wants to count. He wants to twist the knife in Genesis' belly and then maybe punch Tseng a bit, for Banora, for Gillian Hewley, for goddamn Dumb Apples that probably will go extinct now, thanks to ShinRa's bombing.

Zack reports what he saw or thought through clenched teeth and leaves Tseng to fill in what he left out and then he heads straight to the training rooms, to hack a training dummy into pieces.

He joined SOLDIER largely out of hope, and because of those damn dreams that Angeal has always told him to follow – and they all seem so petty and small now. No, they seem like a joke someone had sprung on him without his notice – and now it makes sense why Lazard had mocked him when he had told the man he wanted to become a hero. Because heroes, in ShinRa? Not what they seem to be.

Genesis is a traitor who did horrible things to those who followed him and then slaughtered entire towns – and his own parents – because of some supposed betrayal. Angeal's honour apparently meant nothing, running away for who knows what reasons and to who knew where. And Sephiroth? All too willing to play the Hero of Wutai card and push the uglier responsibilities onto others. To Zack – whom Sephiroth had all but knowingly sent to kill Angeal.

Except, thank god, Angeal hadn't been in Banora.

With a cry, Zack hacks the sword into the test dummy's midriff, sending the upper half of the torso flying towards the training room entrance. And speak of the devil, there is Sephiroth, watching him with cold eyes and folded arms, leaning against the doorframe.

Zack has to almost physically keep the words down in his throat – he wants to tell the man to just piss off so badly. "What do you want?" he asks instead and faces the broken training dummy. There's still about two thirds of it left – plenty to hack into further pieces.

"I hear Angeal wasn't in Banora," the Hero of Wutai says, his voice stony.

"Yeah. His mother hadn't seen him either," Zack says, takes a breath and swings the sword, hard, at the dummy. Another piece splinters off and if it flies dangerously close to Sephiroth, well, so it did and Zack didn't care. "Genesis doesn't know either. He thought I'd know."

Sephiroth frowns at that. "He did?" the man asks and unfolds his arms, stepping away from the doorway. "Angeal isn't with Genesis?"

"Didn't sound like it, no," Zack grunts and hacks off another piece of the dummy before levelling the sword at the legendary SOLDIER First. "I'm telling you, come one step closer and I'll start hacking at you too."

Sephiroth pauses at that and there's almost a hint of a crooked smile on the man's face. But he takes a step back instead, holding his hands up in mocking surrender. "How was Genesis?" he asks.

"Dunno. Bad. Weird. Mutated," Zack says. "Called it deterioration or something."

"The… wound?" the silver haired SOLDIER asks, frowning.

"What wound? If he was hurt, he sure as hell didn't show it – no, I meant the wing on his back," Zack says, severing another piece of the dummy before motioning towards his own back. "Just one on the left side."

Sephiroth stares at him and if Zack didn't know that the man is as cold and expressionless as a damn reptile, he would've said his eyes widened. "Genesis has a wing?" the elder SOLDIER asks. "A wing? Was it…" he trails away, scowls and then meets Zack's eyes with surprising urgency. "Was it feathered?"

"What? Yeah, of course – I mean, sure, a bat wing would fit that bastard better, but it was all feathers. Sorta dark grey feathers," Zack shrugs, but he lowers his sword because there is recognition in Sephiroth's face. "What of it?"

The SOLDIER First hesitates and then nods at him. "Do you have civilian clothes?" he asks.

Zack's almost thrown off by that, but he's too mad to be confused, the irritation carrying him through it. "Sure I do – I take time off the same as any other SOLDIER. Why?" he asks, suspicious.

Sephiroth bows his head and then, very noticeably, glances at the camera in the corner of the room, which even then is flashing its red recording light at them. Then, in a tone that sounds absolutely bizarre, Sephiroth says. "You have the rest of the day off, correct? Go change into civilian clothing and I'll take you out for a drink."

For a moment Zack just stares at the man in incomprehension. Then he lowers his broadsword and doesn't look at the camera. "Yeah, sure. Gimme twenty."

"I'll meet you in the cafeteria, then," Sephiroth says, turns, and leaves in a flash of silver, and Zack just stares after him for a moment before, shaking his head in bewilderment, following.

Sephiroth – who looks very weird in his hooded civilian jacket – doesn't take him out for a drink, but through what feels like half a million alleyways and then, oddest of all, below the plate. The man says nothing until they're beneath and while Zack stares in horror at the people in the little Slum market, the Hero of Wutai finally turns to him and says, "I know where Angeal is."

"Um," Zack answers, making a motion at the people around them. The people with wings, who, judging by the looks of them, were going about their evening shopping like wings were perfectly normal things to have.

"Precisely," Sephiroth says. "Come on."

The whole way through the Slum market, Zack can't help but stare at the people all around them – pretty much all of them have at least some sort of wings on their backs. Most of them are yellow but some of them are more colourful – there is a group of teens who, for reasons unknown, all have a mismatched set of wings, white or yellow or pink on one side, and something darker like black, dark blue or green on the other. A couple have double sets. Some are able to move theirs.

A group of yellow winged children run past them as they exit the market, all of them beating their wings as they go as if trying to fly.

"What the hell?" Zack finally asks.

"Your first time below the plate?" Sephiroth asks. "They're fake, in case you were worried."

"They're moving," Zack points out at one of the kids.

"Mechanical."

That's Sephiroth's two gil on the matter and he doesn't say anything the entire way, through the Slums and their endless junk yards, through the Seventh and Sixth Sectors and then to the Fifth which, Zack is surprised to find, is much cleaner. It also has a whole lot more light than the other sectors have. And, as they make their way through it towards whatever their destination is, it also has something the rest of the sectors definitely didn’t have. It has plant life.

It's all concentrated around an old Church, surrounding it in a haphazard ring of grass, flowers and a couple of shrubs. The whole thing looks very out of place, the greenery and especially the Church, which looks like it belongs in Kalm rather than the Midgar Slums. Around it there are some kids and teens, all of them winged, most of them playing.

Sitting on the steps of the Church, there is a girl with an odd looking cat toy in her lap and white wings on her back. She stands up when she sees Sephiroth, meeting his serious face with a little frown that somehow makes her look even prettier.

"Aerith," Sephiroth says to her. "Is Cloud here?"

"Cloud is always here," she answers with a little laugh. "But I don't think it's him you're looking for," she adds, looking at him and then at Zack thoughtfully. Then she looks down at the cat toy – which, suddenly, looks up. "Tell him they're here," she says, letting the toy down and with an oddly nervous look for a toy, it slips into the Church.

"You've been expecting us?" Sephiroth asks.

"He knew you'd come," the girl shrugs and looks away from the silver haired SOLDIER. "You must be Zack the puppy."

"Er," Zack answers and then frowns. That is what Gillian Hewley had said – because Angeal had told her. Taking a sharp breath he opens his mouth to ask if Angeal is here, but Sephiroth elbows him sharply, giving him a pointed look.

"Oh, you don't need to bother with that," a familiar voice says. "This place is in Black Out – no one's watching. Well. No one who doesn't already know what's here." And with that said, Tseng steps out of the Church – he too is in civilian clothes.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Zack demands while Sephiroth scowls at the Turk, obviously having not expected him.

Tseng just arches an eyebrow at him and then pushes the Church doors open further. "Come on."

Sephiroth and the girl Aerith step inside without hesitation, but Zack spends a moment glaring at Tseng. He doesn't like this, there's something going on here that he's not getting and everyone else seems to know more than him. Which, granted, isn't anything unusual, but it grates more now than ever.

Aerith leads them through the Church – which is more a workshop really – and pass a strange patch of flowers and up a wooden staircase to the second floor. "Shoes off," she says and, somewhat disgruntled, Zack toes his boots off, Sephiroth and Tseng doing the same. Then, her own sandals left by the stairs, she leads them on, to a large room that's half kitchen, half living room.

And there is Angeal, sitting with his legs crossed on the floor with wings on his back – two of them on his left side. He's shirtless and there is an IV going into his arm, bright red – and it comes from the arm of another man who is sitting on the couch a little above him. In the middle of the line, there is a small pump that periodically fills from the donor and empties into the recipient.

"Angeal!" Zack cries and is quickly at his side, not sure if he should touch or not. He looks uneasily at the blood transfusion line between his mentor and the other man, and only then notices the massive amount of wings behind the other, who is watching him silently through a fringe of messy blond hair, shadowed by a hood.

Angeal smiles awkwardly at Zack and then looks up at Sephiroth who is staring. "I should've known you'd be here. But I wasn't expecting this," Sephiroth says, also looking at the transfusion line. "Nor was I expecting the Turks," he adds, glancing at Tseng. "How long have you known that Angeal was here?"

"Ever since I saw Genesis," the Turk says, looking at Angeal. "It was obvious Angeal would come here, after that."

"Nice to be so predictable," Angeal finally speaks and then looks at the blond man. "Aren't we done with this already?" he asks, motioning at the line.

The man looks at the line in his own arm and flexes his hand. "I suppose it's enough for today," he says and shuts the pump in between. Then he makes quick work, first removing his own line and pulling the needle out swiftly, before repeating the process on Angeal. In both cases, the puncture marks heal instantly.

"What's going on, Angeal?" Zack asks, as his mentor stands up.

Angeal hesitates, still looking at the blond man who hands the transfusion line to the girl, Aerith, who nods and carries it away – probably to clean it or something. "I don't know all of it," Angeal finally says, and looks at the white wings on his back, the top one larger than the bottom one. "Genesis calls it degradation – he… when we were in Wutai he triggered it in me, somehow. He wanted me to go with him, afterwards, to join him – told me it was the only way to escape ShinRa because when this happens, you no longer need the Mako injections, but… obviously I didn't go with him. Instead I came here."

"Why didn't you come to us?" Sephiroth demands, stepping forward. "ShinRa could've –"

"ShinRa did this to me," Angeal says sharply. "Genesis might've triggered it, but it was ShinRa's experiments that did it. Hollander and Hojo and…" he trails away, shaking his head. "If I had come back to you, to ShinRa, what do you suppose they would've done? Hollander went with Genesis, which means all the projects are in Hojo's hands. What would he have done with this?" he motions at the wings.

Zack bites his lip, looking between Angeal and Sephiroth who is scowling at the man. "You look better. Than Genesis, I mean – he has a bit of white in his hair, he looked… sick," Zack then says.

"Yes, well. Unlike him, I'm getting treatment from someone who actually knows what's going on," Angeal says, nodding at the blond man.

"Oh really?" Sephiroth asks, looking at the hooded man. "And how do you know anything about this, Cloud?"

The blond man smiles awkwardly and the wings on his back quiver a little before settling down against his back – or as close as they can, being so massive. "How do you suppose?" he asks, motioning behind him.

"But those are fake, aren't they?" Sephiroth scowls.

The blond man, Cloud, hesitates for a moment before lifting his hand to open the belts of the harness that runs across his chest. Reaching back, he snaps a couple of buttons open and then the wings fall – or, three of them do, the right side ones. The left side ones stay there, even whilst the man sets the three right side wings onto the couch. Then the man tugs a couple of buttons open on the back of his hoodie, and pulls it off too.

It reveals not only that the man's hair is long and rather tangled, falling to his shoulders and eyes like he hasn't cut – or even properly brushed – it in years… but also the wings. When he turns, shifting them, Zack can see where they connect to his body – can see the odd, extra muscles beneath his skin working as he moves them, the equally strange bones beneath the skin shifting.

"I… see," Sephiroth murmurs. "So. The wings are a disguise to hide… your wings."

"Novel approach, wouldn't you say?" Tseng asks from where he stands, leaning on the doorway. He has a dry smile on his face, a look of reluctant respect. "I've known him for years and I only realised what it was after I saw Genesis."

The blond man nods in answer. "That was the point – it was Aerith's idea, though," he says and then pushes his hair back and away from his face. His eyes are intensely blue and shining with Mako. "Unlike Genesis and Angeal, though, I am stable – I won't deteriorate."

"And now he's stabilising me," Angeal adds.

"It's just a stopgap measure at best, though," Cloud adds before starting to pull the hoodie back on. "It will stop the degradation for now, but it won't heal it."

"And so I have blood transfusions every day," Angeal agrees with a sigh.

"Did you know about him?" Sephiroth asks Angeal, motioning at the blond man as Cloud started to don on the extra wings.

"I knew he had Mako in his veins – I saw his eyes, a couple of years back. The wings… were a surprise," Angeal admits. "As was the fact that he knew what was going on better than I did. I only came here to hide – the perfect place for it, obviously."

"If you know," Sephiroth looks at the blond man, who stretches out the fake wings and then settles them and the real ones back into their tucked up position. "Then why do the wings appear?"

"And why do you all have a different number?" Zack asks, nodding. "Genesis only had one. And Angeal has two and you have three – why? And why are they only on one side?"

The blond man shakes his head. "I'm not sure. Aerith has theories, but…"

"Aerith?" Sephiroth asks, confused.

"What about me?" the girl questions just as she steps into the room, with the cat toy in her arms again. "Well, don't you all look glum?" she comments, smiling. "What were you saying about me?"

"You have theories about the wings," Sephiroth answers, frowning at her.

"Everybody does. Or, you mean the real wings?" she asks and shrugs, walking over to the couch where Cloud is adjusting the harness straps of his extra wings. "They're a symbol of the trial you're going through. You're fighting the Calamity, so the Planet marks you as her champions."

"What?" Angeal asks. "What Calamity?"

"The thing inside you – the thing that's making you deteriorate," Aerith says and flops down to sit beside the blond man, tucking herself into his wings comfortably while Cloud wraps them around her without even a pause. "The thing they use to make the SOLDIERs. Cloud knows more about that, though, than I do. I just know what the Planet tells me about you – and the struggle you're going through."

"Aerith is the Last Ancient," Tseng comments quietly from where he's standing. "That's why I know about this place – I'm part of her bodyguard rotation." He frowns, looking at Cloud. "The Calamity."

"It's an alien organism that's responsible for wiping out the rest of the Ancients. ShinRa found it a few decades back and now uses it in… various projects. SOLDIER is one of them," Cloud says quietly. "Genesis and Angeal have a bit more of it than most. Among other things, it enables humans to absorb Mako."

Angeal looks down, grimacing and for a while no one says anything, even Sephiroth seems a bit speechless. Scratching his cheek, Zack tries to put the facts into order in his head, tries to figure the whole thing out. What he knows refuses to fall in line, so he falls back to his previous question. "And the number of the wings?" he asks.

"The sacrifices you made in order to fight. The bonds you broke," Aerith says. "Genesis, I guess, only sacrificed Angeal. Angeal on the other hand sacrificed you and Sephiroth. And Cloud… well, he's made more sacrifices than you, Angeal."

"It’s one theory anyway," Cloud murmurs and pulls the hood up, to hide the Mako shine of his eyes. Then he looks up at Angeal. "So, now they know. Now what?" he asks.

"I have no idea," Angeal sighs, and looks at Sephiroth and Zack. "I can't leave this place. For one, ShinRa will hunt me down, and for another I'll die without Cloud's help."

"Hm. Genesis is still out there," Sephiroth says and narrows his eyes. "Could the transfusions help him?"

"They only put a momentary halt to the process – they don't stop it entirely," Cloud says, shaking his head. "Whatever damage is done to him, I can't do anything about it."

"I don't know about you guys, but I for one am not sure we should help him. Genesis slaughtered a village. And his own parents," Zack points out and then pauses, remembering. Gillian. "Um, Angeal…"

"Tseng told me," his mentor says quietly. "She made her choice. As did Genesis," he adds, looking at Sephiroth. "For all that he didn't seemingly have another option like I did, he kidnapped the majority of the SOLDIERs he took with him, and he did kill the people of Banora. He… made his choice, and being ignorant is no defence for the crime of murder."

"No. No it is not," Sephiroth answers quietly, a dark frown marring his face.

"Is madness?" Cloud asks.

"What?" Angeal blinks, turning to him.

"Is madness a defence for it?" the blond man asks. "Because that is what degradation does – what the Calamity does. It weakens the mind, and then, eventually, destroys it. You start losing your grasp on reality, your own personality and motives. You become… very susceptible to even the simplest of suggestions. At the final stages you stop being yourself. You become a puppet to those around you," he adds and looks away. "Had you not come here, had Genesis had you longer, he could've very easily persuaded you to his way of thinking."

"Speaking from experience?" Sephiroth asks sharply.

"Yes," the blond man says, his voice heavy and dark. The girl at his side makes a sad noise and he looks at her, smiling awkwardly. "I'm recovering though," he adds. "It's taken me almost a decade, but I'm recovering."

Angeal scowls. "Then Genesis…"

"How long does it take, to get to that stage?" Sephiroth asks sharply, thoughtfully. "Because Genesis was wounded a few months before he deserted – the wound wouldn't heal, making that the starting point of the degradation. When he deserted, was he already susceptible?"

"It's hard to say. Some are affected within minutes. With others it takes years," Cloud says and looks up at the man. "For the answer, you need to consider his personality. Before he was wounded, would he have done what he did after? Even if he had found something… monstrous about himself, his past, his origins, would he have slaughtered a town over it?"

Zack looks between Angeal and Sephiroth as the two consider it. "No," Angeal says. "I don't think he would've. Genesis always wanted to be a hero and he had a very clear idea of what a hero is. What he's doing now, that's…"

"But who's influencing him? Hollander?" Sephiroth asks darkly.

"That seems most likely," Tseng comments. "However, if the damage to Genesis' mind is already done, and Cloud's blood is not potent enough to reverse it…"

There is a moment of quiet that stretches out and becomes almost oppressive, before the blond man sighs and looks down at the girl at his side. "There might be something," he says, touching her cheek "Something you might be able to do, Aerith."

She blinks, an alert look coming to her eyes. "Something?"

"I was… when my degradation was at its worst, a pool in the Forgotten Capital of the Ancients helped me. It didn't reverse the damage done to my mind, I had to do that myself, but it… saved me. That's why my state is stable," Cloud says slowly, every word dragging like he has to pull them out forcibly. "You're an Ancient. The creation of that water ought to be within your capabilities."

She frowns, looking down. "Water," she murmurs.

"Or we could take Genesis and Angeal to the Forgotten Capital," Sephiroth says.

"If that was possible, I already would've sent Angeal there. The pool isn't there anymore," Cloud says, grimacing and looking down at his hands. "It was corrupted." A moment of bitter silence followed as the blond man squeezed his slightly shaking hands into fists.

Aerith takes a breath and looks up. "I think I remember something my mother – my biological mother – said about water. I'll try to make it," she says. "I don't know if I can, so, no promises."

"Please try," Angeal says and then looks at Sephiroth and Zack. "You need to capture Genesis. Alive."

Zack harrumphs, folding his arms and looking at Sephiroth who looked thoughtful. "I think it can be arranged," Sephiroth says finally. "But we'll… need bait. And a place where ShinRa won't be able to meddle."

"Somewhere like in the Slums?" Tseng asks idly. "This Church is protected, but the rest of the Slums aren't. If Genesis or Angeal for that matter is seen anywhere else except this Church…"

"A sector wide black out could be arranged," Cloud muses and looks at the toy cat in Aerith's lap. "Couldn’t it?"

The cat yawns, curling into a ball and tucking its nose under its tail. "Ah'll see whit Ah ken dae. Shoods ken in hoor ur sae."

"Thank you," the blond says, while the others just stare in incomprehension. "We'll know in an hour or so," the man translates.

Zack scratches the back of his head as the silence grows and stretches into an awkward thing before looking around. It is a nice little place, for all that it's in a Church. Cosy. Then his eyes land on a pair of swords, standing by the wall, next to each other. One of them he recognizes immediately – Angeal's Buster Sword is one of a kind. Or… or was. The one beside it looks rather similar – the blade is oddly fractured but the overall shape is the same.

"That's a weird looking sword," he comments, unable to help himself.

The others look where he looks and Sephiroth arches an eyebrow. "That's the fusion sword, then?" he asks, curious.

"That's it," Cloud agrees.

"It has… a rather familiar overall shape," the Hero of Wutai comments idly and for some reason casts a meaningful glance at Angeal. "Where ever did you get the inspiration?"

Zack folds his arms and frowns a bit, because with the two swords side by side, isn't it obvious? Why bother pointing it out? Confused, he looks at Angeal, to find his mentor carefully looking away. His neck is a little red and he coughs awkwardly, not meeting anyone's eyes.

It is the first time Zack's heard Sephiroth laugh.

10.

Genesis wakes up with his hands bound in shackles, his legs unwilling to budge, with a strange ceiling above his head and the smell of… flowers pervading the air. He freezes for a long moment, doesn't even breathe, trying not to give away that he's awake in case someone is in the room. Somewhere outside he can hear the sound of… of children.

Then he remembers. Of course. Sephiroth and Angeal. He had been informed that ShinRa's lapdogs had seen Angeal in the Slums and had made his way there, desperate to persuade Angeal to his side – to make his friend see reason. Instead, what he had found was not only Angeal, but Sephiroth, and Zack, and a place he hadn't expected to find, not beneath Midgar. A Church, surrounded by flowers.

Genesis winces as a spike of pain runs through his head and he remembers. There had been a man he had never seen before standing on the tip of the Church's rooftop. Six wings on his back and a blade that was like a shattered mockery of Angeal's Buster Sword – and for a moment Genesis had wondered if Angeal had somehow, miraculously, created a summon, because the sight of the man had been so strange. And it didn't help, witnessing what the man had done with that odd Buster Sword copy of his.

The door to the room where he lays opens and unable to help himself Genesis glances towards it. Angeal is there, those white wings on his back. Except he had more now – not just two only on one side, but a full set, neatly tucked against his back. He is out of uniform and leather straps run across his shoulders and chest and something's… different, about him.

"You're awake," the man comments and Genesis narrows his eyes. His old friend smiles. "How unlike you, Genesis, to fall for such an obvious trap."

"Traps aren't something I'm accustomed to expecting from you, old friend," Genesis spits and tries to shift into a seated position – only, he can't. There is a collar of metal around his neck, binding him down, and hissing he finds himself unable to move.

"Apologies for the, well," Angeal motions at the chains and belts and other bindings he's put Genesis under. "But now that we have you we have no intention of letting you cause any more damage, or escape."

"You're dooming me to die, then," Genesis hisses, closing his eyes. "Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul…"

"Pride is lost," Angeal continues, dragging a bench to Genesis' bedside, but not sitting down. "Wings stripped away, the end is nigh. LOVELESS, Act Two. Very melodramatic, but you're not going to die."

"Where am I, Angeal?" Genesis asks, ignoring him, because of course he is. Without Hollander's treatments… "This is not ShinRa. Are you keeping me in that… Church?"

"Yes," Angeal answers, looking away from him. "Though it's not me keeping you."

In that moment, another man enters the room – the hooded, six winged figure from before. Genesis eyes him uneasily, the hood on his head, the blond hair that falls in his eyes – the set of blood transfusion tubes in his hands. Unwilling to say anything, to give away a weakness, Genesis just watches as the hooded man sits down on the bench Angeal pulled out for him – and how the man, then, begins to prepare Genesis for the transfusion.

"What is this?" Genesis finally demands to know, as the needle goes into his arm. "With Angeal here already, what do you want my blood for? Judging by the looks of him, he's handling the degradation much better than I am."

"Just wait," the blond man says and then, silencing Genesis completely, he eases a needle into his own arm, before starting to pump and drawing enough blood to fill the line, the pump and then the other line, before attaching that to Genesis' arm.

"What?!" Genesis hisses and tries to get away but of course he can't, he's bound down too securely.

"Relax," Angeal says, coming to Genesis' other side. "Just wait – you'll feel it in a moment."

And he does. Coolness spreads from his arm and up Genesis' shoulder and with a shudder he relaxes, as it reaches his chest and all of a sudden… everything feels less. The feverish heat he's been enduring for the last months eases and the ache of his bones subsides and he feels a little less like he's going to die at any moment. The constant throbbing of the wound on his shoulder, the stupid, infuriating cut that refuses to heal, eases.

"What is this?" he whispers, his body trembling as the feeling spreads and even the pounding of his head lessens.

"Your body is borrowing my resistance," the blond man answers. "It will halt the degradation process for a while – it won't cure it, but you won't die today at least."

"I've been getting the same treatments ever since you did this to me," Angeal says, motioning behind him. "That's why I look better than you do."

"But how?" Genesis whispers.

"The poison that runs in your veins runs in mine too. My genome is stable, though – you could say I have antibodies for Jenova's degrading effect," the blond man says, watching the pump steadily dose Genesis with small quantities of his blood.

"Who are you?" Genesis asks. "What are you? A third experiment? Why haven't I heard of you?"

The blond man doesn't answer. The transfusion lasts about ten minutes, before the man stops the pump and then takes the line off – the needle too. Then the blond man rises, nods to Angeal, and leaves.

"Where on Planet did you find him?" Genesis demands to know, nodding after the man.

Angeal smiles. "Remember all those times I asked if you’d like to come with me, below the plate, on Sundays?" he asks and sits down. "When I first entered Midgar, I was out of money and ShinRa wasn't about to offer housing to a bunch of kids who probably weren't even going to become employees, so the candidates all had to fend for themselves. I went below the plate, looking for a place to stay – and was directed to this place. I met him then, when he took me in."

Genesis' eyes widen. "You've known? All this time, you've known?"

"No, I haven't. After you did this to me, I came here though, to hide among Cloud's people. That was when I found out," Angeal answers, running his fingers over the straps running across his chest. "It'll make sense to you later, when you have a chance to see them."

Genesis scowls and then looks at the straps more closely. Then the set of wings on Angeal's right side. "They're fake?" he asks, surprised. "Why?"

"That'll make sense too, later."

It does, eventually. It takes about a week of careful watching and transfusions, before Cloud deems him stable enough to release him – somewhat. His hands and feet remain bound, and the man has done something to bind Genesis' wing down as well. His weapons and materia are gone too, leaving him helpless in the upper level of the Church, in the midst of Cloud's people.

Not that he's allowed among them. No, he's bound on the second floor, and can only observe from the windows – but that is enough.

The place is less a Church and more a workshop orphanage, with homeless children wandering in and out and flocking to the six winged man like puppies to their feeder. And flocking is very much an apt term for it, for all of them have wings on their backs. They're all fake, though. And judging by the looks of them, they’re made from chocobo feathers. But they all have them, and some of them can even flap theirs without ever touching them.

From the window Genesis can see the six winged man working in a make shift smithy, or sitting with a bunch of children, tinkering with bits of gadgetry that seem to be involved in the making of the fake wings. Sometimes Angeal is with the other man, watching him work, but most of the time Angeal is with Genesis, keeping an eye on him.

"The way I figure it happened is that Cloud ended up here, with wings on his back. And instead of trying to cover them up, he ended up flaunting them, making sets for others and filling the place with winged people. And that was years ago – almost everyone in the Slums has a set or several, nowadays," Angeal explains. 

"He's a needle hiding in the haystack of his own making," Genesis murmurs. "How novel."

"I didn't know. I just came here to hide from ShinRa and you," Angeal laughs, shrugging his shoulders, his wings.

"And now we're to hide here, in the Slums, for the rest of our lives?" Genesis demands to know, disgusted and fascinated by the concept all at once. From the windows of the Church, the Slums don't seem quite as dirty as he had imagined, though.

"I don't know about the rest of our lives, Genesis. But until further notice, yes," Angeal says and looks at him. "Do you feel like yourself again?"

Genesis grimaces and doesn't answer.

Sometimes – often times, all the time, most of every day – he can see a girl from his window. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, with a long braid of brown hair falling between her white wings, and she's kneeling on the dirty ground a little further away from the Church, praying. The others give her a wide berth, with only the six winged man occasionally approaching her to talk with her, to lay a hand on her shoulder, and then leaving her to it, to whatever she's doing. Sometimes, Angeal looks in her direction with mingled hope and dread.

It's almost two weeks before she comes close enough to be introduced. Aerith, the Last Ancient. And, if things turned out the way Angeal hopes, their saviour.

"Ancient?" Genesis asks, disbelieving and suspicious. "That's preposterous. There are no Ancients left."

"Well, there are no angels either," the girl shrugs, smiling and completely immune to his glare. "And yet here we are, all with wings on our backs."

She is infuriating and enthralling all at once and has the entire Church wrapped around her little finger – Cloud especially. For a while Genesis wonders at their relationship, before she laughs at him, patting his cheek somewhat condescendingly and leaving him scowling after her.

Sometimes Sephiroth and Zack visit them. Never at the same time and always in civilian clothing. Sephiroth tends to don a somewhat constipated look whenever he does, looking ridiculous in his hooded jacket, but Genesis can't deny that it's… somewhat gratifying to see him. Mostly Sephiroth ignores him, talking with Angeal and occasionally Cloud, but every time Sephiroth comes to ask him if he feels like himself yet.

Zack just scowls – taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in informing Genesis that he, personally, had been in charge of hiding away Genesis' materia and weaponry and he'd have a snowball's chance against Ifrit of finding them. Genesis might've felt vindictive about it, if not for the utterly ridiculous way the puppy falls over himself every time Aerith is near – and how quickly Zack is to flee whenever Cloud comes by.

Cloud himself is oddly the easiest to be around. The man expects precisely nothing from Genesis, and while the swordsmage gets the distinct impression that the man wouldn't care if Genesis dropped dead, it is… refreshing, to have one person who doesn't demand for him to come to his senses. Cloud is the one who explains why they're waiting, though – why they're all waiting on Genesis.

"You too, huh?" Genesis asks, after the explanation.

"Mmm," the blond man nods. He's working on a set of metallic wing bones in the living room, carving delicate circuitry in them. "I took on the personality and past of another, when I was degrading. It wasn't even pushed on me, I just took it because my own was fading away and I needed something to fill in the blanks. It took me almost two years to remember who I really was, and I still can't remember… most of my own past," he admits.

And Genesis has to admit, he might very well be lucky. At least he still remembers. Not all of it, though – and that scares him. Things about his childhood have faded into obscurity and one day he realises he can't remember things like how he and Angeal met when they were children, or what they used to do. What he remembers is talking with Angeal about those events, about them stealing apples together, but not the actual events themselves.

And he can't remember, not quite, why it had been so important to bring so many SOLDIERs with him, when he had deserted from ShinRa. It had been important; it had had a reason, but… for the life of him he can't remember why. All he remembers is Hollander, telling him what must be done in order to cure the degradation. What places must be attacked. Which people killed. And always, always, the pressing urge to find Angeal, and not because he was a friend but because his genome was more stable, because he had the cure…

He remembers Hollander calling him monster, over and over again. Only monsters have wings. Only monsters can do what he has done. Only monsters would. Monster, monster, monster.

"No," Aerith says, taking his face between her small hands and looking at him. "No. Wings don't mean monster. You are not a monster. You're fighting, Genesis. You're fighting demons inside you – of course you would have wings."

Except Genesis only has one and it's not even white like Angeal's, like Cloud's. It's dark grey, almost black, and it looks dirty in comparison to theirs. It looks monstrous, filthy, disgusting. Or at least it does, until he realises that it actually is dirty. It's been months since he first sprouted it in Wutai – and he's never once even tried washing it. Of course it's dirty.

Aerith is the one to wash it when he asks – Cloud still refuses to release the shackles so he can't reach the wing himself, but Genesis is more or less fine with that. For several hours he sits in the bathtub of Cloud's apartment, while Aerith gently runs a brush and soap and water through the feathers, with slow but expert motions.

"I help Cloud with this too," she informs him. "With his wings, he'd otherwise take the whole day. But once they're clean, properly clean, they don't get dirty that easily."

The water runs almost black when she's done and there are about half a hundred feathers left in the tub. But the wing is white. It's white.

If he breaks down a little there and then, on the bathroom floor, Aerith, the stupidly kind girl she is, doesn't judge him for it.

After that, though, he too starts looking on the times when Aerith steps further away from the Church, to pray, with something like hope. Cloud's blood is keeping him suspended on the knife edge of sanity and chaos, frozen between one moment and the next, and as he begins to realise the value in it, the more tired of it he grows. He wants to be free of it. Free of Jenova, of the degradation, of the madness still chipping at the edges of his personality. As much as he hates it when Angeal and Sephiroth ask about it, he wants to be himself.

Angeal, though, doesn't seem to mind being suspended in waiting. Not with the way he keeps glancing after Cloud, looking at the fusion sword, and then looking away, forever embarrassed.

"You could just ask him," Genesis finally points out, getting truly tired of the shy teenager act.

"I can't," Angeal answers, uneasy. "For one, he's known me since I was sixteen and probably doesn't even see me that way, and for two… I'm not sure he…"

"Has any libido to speak of?" Genesis asks, snorting. Sure, he's seen the teenage girls and the occasional boy who all but throw themselves at Cloud, just for him to completely ignore them, but he's pretty sure that has more to do with the fact that the man probably raised those kids – or as good as. "You won't ever know until you ask. And what's the worst that could happen? It's not like he will mock you for it. He's too emotionally stunted to even know what mocking is."

"Hey," Angeal objects, frowning.

"You know it's true. The man doesn't do… hurt," Genesis makes an awkward motion with his still bound hands. "On others, I mean. He just doesn't do it. Even when he brushes people off, he does it sort of kindly. The worst he can do is say no."

Angeal seems to think that it is the absolute worst thing the man could do, but there's new determination on his face so Genesis counts it as a victory. Considering some of the victories he's had in his life before it's really not much, but at this point Genesis is willing to take what he can get.

Mostly his existence is based on waiting, with very little to do. Now that they no longer deem him a immediate danger, Cloud and Angeal both tend to be busy with the Church, with Angeal throwing himself into the work with the sort of determination he usually only shows in battle. He looks happy, though, surrounded by kids and showing them the basics of swordplay with some mock swords Cloud makes for them in his make-shift smithy. Happy and oddly domestic for all that he has wings on his back and is surrounded by winged kids.

If Angeal could never again leave the Church and the Slums, he'd probably not even mind.

"Why the Slums?" Genesis asks Cloud. "You could go anywhere. Why do you stay here? Why do all this… here?" he motions outside, at the winged children, at Angeal, at the Slums themselves which he now knows would be much worse off without Cloud minding them.

"Aerith is here," the man answers simply, as he disassembles the fusion sword to give it its daily maintenance.

Genesis considers that and then nods. It makes sense – especially considering Aerith's theory about the wings. Cloud has embraced the life of Guardian Angel, after all, and who else would be his charge but the Last Ancient.

Looking at the sword, Genesis frowns a little. When Angeal, Sephiroth and Zack had all but ambushed him, and Cloud had been standing on the Church roof top, he had seen the man do something… impossible with the sword. Before the fight had ever begun, Cloud had thrust it up and separated it in mid-air. The five smaller pieces of the six pieces of the sword had been thrown seemingly in every direction, and then they had all been imbedded into the ground around the Church – at equal distances from each other. Then the man had cast a shield with the only sword, the central sword, that had been left in his hand.

A shield which had enveloped the entire Church.

And for all that the fight had demolished some of the ground and sent a pile of the rusting remains of cars flying, the Church had come out undamaged, the shield holding strong for the entirety of it before Cloud had brought it down, to fetch Genesis and carry him inside.

"How did you do it?" Genesis asks. "The shield you cast around the Church is the biggest I've ever seen. No one should have a reach like that."

"Hmm. Do you know much about fusion swords?" Cloud asks as he lays each piece gently on the floor after their wipe down.

"Not really. They're not very popular."

"No. And the fusion swords you've seen most likely aren't actual fusion swords, just swords that fuse together," the blond man says. "There is a difference between what's an actual fusion sword and what's just an attempt at making a versatile multi-sword assembly."

"And the difference is?" Genesis asks impatiently.

"Magic," Cloud answers, glancing up. "Fusion swords – real fusion swords – are designed for sword magic. The point of a true fusion sword is that, no matter how many pieces it falls into, it all works as a single entity. It's a hard thing to grasp but this is a single sword," he says, motioning to the six swords.

"Hmm," Genesis hums, eyeing the swords, remembering the sheer size of the shield. Then he gets it. "It's a… single sword. So any magic you do with it is cast through all six pieces – and it's split between them! So when you spread them, you can… cast spells with as big an area of effect as you choose."

"Much more efficient than merely equipping all my materia with an All, I think," Cloud agrees.

"That's genius. How come I've never heard of it?" Genesis asks, confused.

"Because like I said, the fusion swords you've seen before aren't true fusion swords. The making of a fusion sword is an Ancient discipline that's been forgotten, and nowadays people just try to copy the design without understanding the concept, and what they end up with is an awkward, unwieldy copy of something the purpose of which escapes them," Cloud shrugs. "This might be the only true fusion sword in the world."

Cloud, it turns out, is something of an expert in the Ancients. The fake wings that move use Ancient technology. His sword is Ancient technology. And the more Genesis looks around, the more he sees it around the house too. The tools of Cloud's smithy are all magitech, with Lightning and Fire materia at their cores. Cloud even has a magitech generator that's capable of supplying the Church with power in case of a power shortage.

It makes more and more sense that Cloud is so keen on protecting Aerith. The man is all but an Ancient himself, if not in blood then in his way of living. And the faith he has in Aerith makes more and more sense, the day when she finally opens the ground in front of the Church, and creates a spring from nothing.

And Cloud is right. The water, when they take Genesis to it, is the sweetest he's ever tasted.

∞

Cloud watches over the Sector Five Church for a long while, just taking it in.

The place certainly has changed – the piles of junk and rubble and rusting metal have been pushed further and further away from the Church, opening the space for the flowers and grass and greenery that's spreading from it like green ink, leaking over the dull brown of the ground. The spring in front of the Church, the miraculous healing water that has every person in the Slums visiting once or twice a week, now has a pavilion around it, the edges of it secured with stones and tiles. It, too, is surrounded by flowers.

It's more beautiful than he had thought, looking at it from above. Cloud's sitting on one of the support struts just above the Church, next to one of the colossal UV lamps Reeve has, not so subtly, started adding everywhere in the Slums. From his vantage point he can see everything – the smithy, the playground, the sports field that's a new addition with its goals, the greenhouse Aerith just recently had Cloud, Angeal and Genesis build. The Church and its influence is spreading, and it's pretty amazing to look at.

After a while, Cloud stands up on the metal support and spreads out his six wings, firing up the materia he has equipped in them, and then taking flight. He doesn't go straight to the Church, but behind one of the remaining junk piles, out of sight. There he settles his wings back, smoothes the flight wrinkles out of his clothing and only then begins making his way towards the Church, on foot, like some normal person.

When he gets there, people glance at him, the kids pausing, taking a double look, and staring. Cloud smiles and walks past them, to the Church and then inside, ignoring the whispering and pointing.

Inside, Aerith and Angeal are fitting a little boy with a new set of wings. Genesis is reciting LOVELESS to a crowd of utterly besotted teenage girls. And there, in the back, is him. The other.

Cloud knocks on the open Church doors and Angeal glances up – and stares. Then the others follow suit until the other looks up from the piece of materia circuitry he had been adjusting – and he doesn't stare. He gapes.

"You," the other says, the circuitry falling from his hands. "How –?"

"Cloud?" Angeal asks, uneasy, looking a bit like he wants to draw a weapon or put up his fists – it's a bit endearing, really. "Cloud, who is this?"

It's so weird to hear people say his name, and not be speaking to him.

"Hello, brother," Cloud waves at the other Cloud across the Church hall, grinning at him and ignoring the shocked looks aimed his way – he had been expecting them, after all, they were pretty much unavoidable. And he might've felt a bit guilty for it, if it wasn't so much fun, seeing all of them just gape at him. "You got a moment? I’ve got to talk with you. In private."

Then, without waiting, Cloud steps back and out of the Church and waits there – and like he knew, his double comes out, following him – and after him comes, naturally, Angeal the ever worried and Aerith, who looks between them in bewilderment. Again, unavoidable – though she is cute, now that Cloud sees her for the first time through his own eyes.

"A bit further away," Cloud says, pushing his hands into his pockets and walking far enough, to the nearest of the junk piles, to make sure no one would overhear.

"How?" the other Cloud asks. "You're… I don't…"

"You've forgotten – you were alive around this time, you know," Cloud answers, shrugging. "And despite the fact that you're here, I'm here as well. I'm currently seventeen years old, as were you, around this time, in your first go-round."

It sounds nonsensical, but he knows his double can understand it – his own thoughts follow the same, nonsensical patterns, after all. It takes the other a moment to catch up and he has to sit down on a concrete ring nearby, but eventually he nods. And, of course, the man has to ask, "But… how do you know? You shouldn't know."

Cloud shrugs. "You leak," he answers. "I've been having visions and daydreams and nightmares about your past ever since I was seven," he explains, pacing a few steps idly back and forth. "Not a very pleasant thing for a child of that age, but I got used to it, and eventually started understanding it. I've also been seeing the stuff you see, which is why I know all this."

He motions at the Church, at the Slums, everything – all of which he knows as well as his double does. While his double looks at the Church, frowning behind the cover of his hood and hair, Cloud shrugs again. "Vincent has a theory about it," he says. "Because you and I have the same soul, the same bit of Lifestream inside both of us, we share some of each other. Except, you have more you in you than I have me. We're out of balance, like an hourglass, and you're the full one atop me, the empty one, and that makes you trickle down into me."

"Vincent…" the other murmurs, frowning. "I didn't… I didn't realise."

"I know you didn't," Cloud chuckles. "You didn't even really think of me, you completely forgot that I might exist. It's okay. I know your mind doesn't work quite right," he says and looks at the Church. "You still see things in double and triple, don't you? In time streams, rather than just the present."

The other sighs and nods, looking away from the Church. "I've gotten used to it," he says.

"Meaning half of the time you have your eyes shut and nobody knows because you still keep them covered," Cloud laughs, stepping closer to him. The other doesn't bother to stop him, as Cloud pushes his hood back, to reveal the mess of long blond hair, and the Mako blue eyes. "You need a haircut, brother," Cloud chuckles, pushing the hair out of the man's eyes and looking right into them. They shine more than he thought they would. "Do you see me?"

The other stares at him for a while, eyes wide and flickering over his face, his much shorter hair, his normal eyes that lack the Mako glow. "I see you," he says then, reaching out and touching the spiky hair. "I forgot this hairstyle," he murmurs, running his shaking fingers over Cloud's hair. "Why do you have it?"

"Because you forgot," Cloud shrugs. "I'm doing a lot of things you've forgotten, really."

"Like waking up Vincent?" the other asks, frowning. He looks behind Cloud's shoulder, at the wings. "You make them too, but… why are they…?"

Cloud grins, glancing backwards and spreading out his wings. Unlike the other, whose wings are so white they glow, his are black. And not in the least feathery. "There aren't that many birds around Nibelheim, you might recall. What we have though, is dragons, and they have wings too," he answers, stretching the leather wings out and then settling them back in. "And they're a bit of homage to Vincent, I guess, and a thank you for all the times he's put up with me. And he's put up with a lot from me too."

The other nods, looking guilty. "I forgot about him too," he admits. "And not like I forgot about you – I forgot he even existed."

"It's fine. He's doing well – I woke him up when I was eight. Took me a while to get him to believe me about the stuff I knew, but eventually I think he just decided to stick around and keep an eye on me. He's on the western continent right now, though, not here," Cloud says and releases the other's hair, letting it fall back into his eyes, to cover the glow. "We have a bit of a project going on, something else you forgot. That's why I'm here actually."

"What project?" The other asks, uneasy, his angel wings shifting.

"The important one," Cloud says, looking at him pointedly. "Come on. You know it. Just think. Right back to the start, the start of everything. You'll remember."

His double frowns, looking away for a moment and then, after a couple of minutes, his eyes widen a little. "Jenova. And the reactors."

"Yep," Cloud smiles, tucking his hands back into his pockets. "You've done well here, but there's still a bit of a crisis going on with the Planet. You're in no position to do anything about it though, so… I made it my project instead."

"You shouldn't have," the other whispers. "Covering up for my mistakes – you should've… just let it be, and live your own life."

"I am," Cloud laughs, crouching down in front of the man and taking his hands. "Look at me, brother. I am living my own life, just the way I want to live it. And I'm not covering for your mistakes, I'm just adopting your knowledge and doing whatever I want with it. And if our wishes are pretty much identical, so what? We are the same person, inside."

"You still shouldn't have to," the other says. "With Angeal and Genesis… and Sephiroth is on our side… I would probably have an easier time of it."

Cloud laughs at that. "No you wouldn't – with that posse, you wouldn't get anywhere near a single reactor and you know it. The four of you are ridiculously noticeable. While me and Vincent? We can take our wings off, and no one will look twice at us."

The other still looks like he's about to argue, but Cloud shakes his head, squeezing his hands. "No, this is my project now. I'm doing it because I chose to. The people of this world might not thank me for it, but completing it will make me a hero. I'll be saving the world," he smiles and squeezes the other's hands again. "And that's all either one of us ever wanted, isn't it?"

"I… suppose."

Cloud's smile widens. "And besides, you're a bit too late," he adds. "We're almost done. I came here to warn you, actually."

The other's eyes widen a little. "Warn me?" he asks, suddenly alert.

"Yep. Me and Vincent, we've been working on this for years, taking advantage of everything you've leaked into me – and you've been in all those reactors. Well, aside from Corel and Gongaga, but they weren't hard to infiltrate," Cloud shrugs. "With that knowledge, with Vincent's past as a Turk, and with no one ever knowing a thing about us… it took us years, but we're done."

The other just stares at him, wide eyed. It's hard to say if he is awed or horrified – his face doesn't do expressions well. Cloud decides that it's awe in the other's eyes and grins at it. "Every reactor on the Planet is wired with explosives. And we're going to blow them all up. Tonight."

"All of them?" the other asks, choked.

"Each and every one of them, here and in the west both. Best way to make sure no one can stop us, just hit them all at once. I've been in Midgar for a couple of weeks now, sneaking into the reactors – I finished with the Deepground reactor just this morning. We're done, everything is set," Cloud shrugs, smiling. "All that was left was to warn you that it's going to happen."

The other swallows and looks down at their hands. Then, sighing, he bows his head a bit and nods. "You're not at all like I was at your age," he comments. "I'm sorry about that."

Cloud shrugs. "Don't be. I for one am happier like this. Sure, there were the nightmares, but I prefer to have the confidence. And this way, you know… I can prevent a lot of the bad things that happened to you. You did some of that yourself – it's not like Sephiroth is about to lose it this time around, but it's still better to be safe than sorry, I think."

"Yes. I suppose it is," the other murmurs, still looking a bit sad.

Cloud grins at the expression and kisses the other's hands. "I'm okay," he assures. "I'm happy. And I'll be happier still when we've flicked the switch, trust me." Then he looks at the other closely. "Are you? Happy, I mean."

The other frowns at that and looks towards the Church, where the nervous Angeal and suspicious Genesis and worried Aerith all watch them, uneasy and all but ready to bolt forward. "Yes," the other then says. "I'm happy here."

"Then that's okay. Things will be a bit more difficult around here once we finish the project, I know, and I'm sorry for whatever problems it will cause you. All I want is for you to be happy, brother," Cloud nods and stands up.

"We're not actually brothers," the other frowns. "You sound like someone I used to know when you say that."

"Yes, I know. His name is Kadaj. You fought him, once upon a future," Cloud agrees, and reaches forward to press a kiss on his other's forehead before hugging him. "It's okay, you don't have to remember. I'm remembering for you. And all the things you don't remember, the things you've forgotten… I forgive you for them."

The other hesitates for a moment before hugging back, arms winding around Cloud's waist below the three sets of demon wings – and Planet the man is strong. Cloud chuckles, ruffling the long, messy hair. "You seriously need to get a haircut."

There is a muffled laugh against his chest, before the other releases him. "Genesis has been telling me the same," he murmurs, running his hand through the messy locks. "I guess I should."

"You really should," Cloud agrees, nodding, and presses another kiss on the man's forehead. "I'll be going now. I don't know when I can come visit again. I'll be the most wanted terrorist in the history of this Planet soon, so I probably can't come anytime soon. But if I can, I will."

"I'll be here," the other says. "Tell Vincent… tell him…"

"I know – and so does he. I've already told him," Cloud smiles and spreads out his wings. "Oh," he then says and quickly digs through his pockets. "I almost forgot. I have something for you."

He sets the orb of unmastered materia in the other's hand. "It's called Float – Vincent and I found it, a little while back," he explains. "It should put a bit of a kick in your wing business."

"It works?" the other asks, instantly fascinated – and of course he would be. The wings are one of the rare things he can look at without seeing double.

"Makes you absolutely weightless," Cloud shrugs. "It's a bit weird and takes some getting used to – and it took me months before I figured out how to steer. But it was worth it."

The other nods, and smiles. It's still awkward and not all there – the other still can't express emotions properly. "Thank you," he says.

"Be happy, brother," Cloud answers and fires up his materia, pushing away from the ground with a couple of powerful wing beats. He stays there, in midair, keeping himself level with idle wing strokes. "And look after Aerith. She's probably why you're here in the first place."

"Yeah," the other says, standing up. "I know – and I will."

"Good. Also, stop being hard on Angeal already – the man's beside himself, it's almost painful to watch," Cloud laughs, as his other goes a little red around the ears. "You deserve to be loved, you know – and you deserve to love someone too. Stop denying yourself the chance, brother."

"I'll… try," the other chokes out, embarrassed. And then, sounding a little lost, "Weren't you leaving?"

With a laugh, Cloud nods and wings away, leaving his double from the future to deal with the fallout of his visit. It would probably spin the rumour mill for a while – though, once the reactors went, not many would care, probably.

Smiling, Cloud veers towards the air duct he had used to sneak into the Slums without notice, and as he flies, he digs out his cell phone and dials Vincent. "I met him. He's kind of cute," Cloud says, by way of hello, even as he slips into the air vents. "In a sort of not all there way."

"I see," the gunman answers, his voice stoic even over the phone. "And are we ready?"

"We're very ready," Cloud agrees. "I told him it would happen tonight, though, so let’s wait a couple of hours, alright? How's Jenova?"

"She's melting," Vincent answers, with obvious satisfaction in his tone. "I started the acid treatment just an hour ago – she's slowly dissolving and I find it quite pleasant to watch."

"I'm sure you do," Cloud laughs, landing on a small metal ledge and opening a door there, entering the maintenance shaft. "So, four hours until detonation, that sounds okay to you?"

"That's fine," Vincent says. "Be careful."

"You too," Cloud agrees, and hangs up, closing his eyes for a moment. He's met his brother, he's finished his work, and tonight, he would become a hero.

It is a good day.