#alt 10

“Lando!”

The whisper sounded urgent, but Lando’s head hurt too much to pay attention. If he stayed asleep he could ignore the throbbing pains all over his body, the pressure in his skull, and the way his wrists were stuck together over his belly. The pillow beneath his head was hard for some reason, and he didn’t seem to have a blanket, but sleep sounded much too good for him to care.

“Lando! Please! You’ve gotta wake up!”

Oscar’s panicked voice broke through his sleepy haze, and he flinched awake, hissing in pain, his body far too sluggish to bolt upright and shuffle closer to his voice.

“Osc?” he asked, blinking against the dull bulb on the ceiling directly above him. He tried to move his head towards his boyfriend’s voice, but the room spun, and he screwed up his eyes again as his stomach rolled dangerously. “Fuck, I feel like shit.”

The air smelled musty, the mattress rock hard and cold beneath him. Had he slept on the floor? Was he hungover? Why wasn’t Oscar helping him?

“Can you sit up?” He didn’t like the urgency in the alpha’s voice. Were they late for something?

“Can ya gimme a hand?” he groaned, trying to bring his hands up to help, but they were not cooperating. The effort made his sore body scream, and he whined. “M’not feeling good.”

“I can’t, Lan. I’m kinda tied up here.”

“What the fuck?” Lando spat, fighting his instincts to stay still. He tried to move his arms to help him roll over, but something was digging into his wrists that was stopping him. They were ziptied together.

He twisted himself onto his right side so he could finally get his eyes on Osc, and quickly wanted to throw up, both from the sight and sensations the movement sent through his body.

And the realisation of their situation.

Oscar’s suit jacket was gone, as were his shoes and watch. His white shirt and suit pants crumpled and smeared with dirt and flecks of blood. Not much blood, thank god, meaning no stab or gunshot wounds, but enough to show he’d sustained a hefty beating before they’d been put in there. Lando’s omega whimpered, knowing his alpha was hurt and he couldn’t do anything.

His arms were ziptied to a metal ring on the brick wall above his head, his socked feet ziptied together, and he sat on the hard, stone floor with his back against the wall, knees up close to his chest.

Dark bruises were blooming over the visible skin, his neck, wrists, as well as cuts on his face, scrapes from being roughly handled. Lando’s instincts screamed to comfort. Given the throbbing aches all over his own body, Lando figured he looked much the same. There was no doubt worse hidden beneath their clothes. Lando’s ribs fucking stung for one.

“Not to alarm you, but we got drugged and kidnapped.” Oscar’s voice was shaking.

“That would explain a lot.” His hard pillow and mattress were, in fact, the rough, cold floor. The room was small, its low ceiling, no windows, and exposed bricks made Lando think of creepy basements in American houses in films. There were no stairs, though, just a bolted metal door on the wall to his left.

“I can’t move any closer. Can you sit up?” Osc asked again.

“I’ll try,” he said.

His shoeless feet were also ziptied, but unlike Oscar, Lando wasn’t tied to anything. He was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, like whoever did this could only be bothered to tie one of them to the wall. The same as Osc, his suit jacket, watch, and shoes were missing, leaving him in his shirt, trousers, and socks. His belt was gone too, which meant Oscar’s probably was as well; he just couldn’t see from his current angle.

His entire body protested as he tried to move, the room spinning violently once more. Rolling onto his front, his tied arms stretched out in front of him, he pulled them back towards him, awkwardly shuffling himself towards Oscar, bending his knees and leaning on his right hip, using his legs to propel himself alternating with his arms. His ribs screamed, the zipties dug into his wrists, and his head stung from the quick, sudden movements.

Breath heaving in his chest, he reached his boyfriend, who lowered his legs so he could rest his head in his lap, on his back, looking up at Oscar. Clumsily reaching up his hands, he stroked Osc’s jaw the best he could, his lip split and bloody, bruises up his cheek. Osc kissed his hands before they dropped back to his lap from fatigue. He couldn’t imagine how Osc felt with his arms above his head, however long they’d been there for.

Feeling minutely safer now that they were closer together and touching, Lando shut his eyes and tried his best to think over the events of the evening. Given their suits, they’d been at some kind of important occasion.

“Can you remember anything?” he asked, squinting up at Oscar.

“No, that’s why I think we were drugged. That and how weird I feel in general, other than the bumps and bruises. Can’t say I’ve been drugged before to give an accurate comparison though.”

“Yeah, I do not feel good,” Lando muttered. Everything had stopped spinning at least, now that he was lying still again. He lifted his wrists, so they were in his eye line, before dropping them and looking back up at Osc, with his hands tied to the wall. “Could they just not be arsed with me or what?” His voice was ragged, his mouth and throat dry, and he tried to clear his throat, but coughing made his ribs hurt.

Oscar frowned, his mouth screwing up in disgust. “I was awake. I fought back. They threatened to hurt you.”

“Oh fuck,” Lando swore, attempting to sit up, but he flopped helplessly like a fucking fish instead, his energy sapped, pain shooting through his head and chest.

“Careful,” Osc scolded, but it was soft and tired. “I hate that I can’t touch you right now.”

Lando blinked up at him, hazy mind assessing, omega instincts calling. Determined, he rolled himself back on his front, Oscar shifting his legs, so they wouldn’t collide with his face.

“Lando?”

“Gimme a minute,” he whined, breathing through the nausea once again, ignoring the searing pain in his ribs.

He managed to kneel, using most of his remaining strength, before awkwardly shuffling forward. With their feet ziptied together, it would be nearly impossible to straddle his lap comfortably like he wanted to. Instead, he eased himself down beside Osc, bracing his hands on his boyfriend’s side, apologising as Osc hissed in pain, his shoulders jarred. Carefully, he swung both his legs over Oscar’s, so he was then perpendicular.

“Put your arms over my head the best you can,” Osc urged. “Brace your hands against the wall.” He bowed his head, wrists pulling at the metal ring.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Lando whispered.

Oscar shook his head, alpha rumbling gently. “S’fine. I can live with the pain. I just need you as close as possible right now. Use the wall and my shoulders, I’ll buck up, and hopefully you’ll land on my legs.”

“Okay.” Lando clumsily stroked his hair as best he could from his current angle, leaning up to kiss his cheek. He was probably gonna pass out from the effort, but at least he wouldn’t fall to the floor.

“You ready?” Osc asked once they were in position.

Lando had shuffled his bum right up to his thighs, forearms braced on his shoulders, and one palm braced against the wall to help him push, the other one twisted backwards by the zipties. It was gonna hurt them both, but if it meant they’d be closer and able to comfort each other more easily, Lando would take it.

He took a breath. “Yeah.”

“On three. One, two, three!”

Lando swore as he was suddenly bumped into the air, skin scraping against the wall. Oscar was bracing his weight against the metal ring, essentially doing a bad pull-up, and Lando was trying his best to use his shoulders as leverage to lift himself at the same time. They both cried out in pain, but as their limbs settled, Lando’s butt was cushioned on Osc’s thighs, his arms looped around his neck, saving Osc’s head from hitting the wall.

Lando recovered first, immediately unlooping his arms from around Oscar’s head and resting against his chest, face buried against his neck. Oscar’s chest was heaving from the effort, and he was clearly struggling with the strain in his arms and shoulders.

“I’m here, I love you,” Lando chanted, while they both waited for their heart rates to calm down. “Do you want me to take off your scent blocker?”

“Please,” Osc gritted out.

He peeled himself back as far as he could manage without losing his balance, slowly moving his hands to the alpha’s neck, Osc baring it, wincing as it pulled his strained muscles. It took him a lot longer than normal, his energy gone, and given that they apparently hadn’t eaten or drunk in a good while. But he managed to peel off the blocker, and his omega purred instinctively as the smooth, slightly burnt chocolate filled the musty air.

“Yours?” Osc asked. And shit, Lando would have to claw at his own one.

It was awkward, given his ziptied wrists, but he managed to peel it off and throw it on the floor, Osc’s alpha rumbling as Lando’s own scent mixed into the cold room. They were both already breathing easier, despite all the pain and upset.

Lando wiped a stray tear from Oscar’s cheek, a huge sign of how much he was hurting.

“Are you okay?” he whispered. He rested their foreheads together, breathing each other in for several moments.

“I’m just thankful we’re together in here. Honestly not sure how I would’ve handled this if we’d been separated, or if it was just one of us taken.”

Lando kissed him, properly this time, not wanting to think anymore. It was wet and salty, and he felt touch-starved, but it warmed his insides, calming the abject terror that was shooting down his spine.

They both deserved a moment to break, together.

To be continued in No.16

~

ONE.

POV: Bianca

The inn’s wooden walls groaned under the weight of mountain wind, the sound thin and mournful like breath through a reed. Dusk had come and gone, and night pressed close: an unlit hush broken only by the slow flicker of a single lantern on the nightstand.

The room smelled faintly of pine and gun oil, of clean steel and old air that never quite left Nibelheim’s valleys, making Bianca gag once again.

Three narrow beds lined the wall. Crisp white sheets, gray wool blankets. A small painting hung crooked above the dresser: an image of a woman, her painted eyes turned skyward as though she knew something the room didn’t.

Bianca sat on the edge of the nearest bed. The wooden frame creaking beneath her weight. Still damp from the mist rolling down the mountains, her coat clung heavy to her shoulders. She hadn’t had the strength to remove it.

Across from her, Sephiroth stood in silence. His head bowed, and his gloved hands braced on the table beside his weapon. The Masamune leaned against the wall, the blade catching faint gold where the lamplight met the steel.

His hair—silver as moonlit frost—spilled forward as he breathed. The strands before his mouth trembled at the ends. He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the reactor. Not really. Not since slicing those forsaken tubes from the incubators in half.

Am I a human being? Those words echoed through their bond, souring the connection between them, as if a noose was being tightened around their necks.

The horror of what he’d found there still lived behind his eyes, bright and terrible, like a storm seen through glass. Jenova’s voice still curled through his mind. Bianca could feel it, a phantom whisper scratching against the thread that bound them.

Her own light was restless in her chest. The celestial hum rose in her blood until the air shimmered around her. She tried to suppress it. It frightened him when it came unbidden, but the strain of holding it back tore through her veins like lightning trapped beneath glass. The walls of the inn seemed too small to contain it, and the shadows trembling as if her pulse alone disturbed them.

She could feel it: the contamination whispering through him, words of honeyed poison. The taint crawled in his cells, a black current threading up his arm, winding toward his heart. Jenova. Restless. Hungry.

That presence within him pulsed like a second heartbeat, faint but insistent. Its rhythm just off enough to make the air between them ache. She could almost hear its song: a thin, discordant echo that only Celestial senses could catch, the language of the Void wearing a mother’s voice. A false mother's voice.

Bianca held her stomach for a moment before she looked up at him. “Sephiroth,” she said softly.

His name broke the silence like a blade through ice, but he didn’t look up. He still stood still as a statue before that small table. The lamplight gilded the pale strands of his hair. His gloves were still stained faintly from the reactor’s debris. Smudges of black that wouldn’t come off.

Bianca stepped closer, every motion deliberate. The floorboards creaked under her boots, and the sound made him flinch, barely perceptible. His eyes were distant, as he was focused on something that wasn’t the room, or her, but the memory that had followed them back. Whatever he had thought he seen in that reactor—whatever truth had turned in his mind—it was still unspooling behind those mako-green eyes.

Her own heart stuttered. She wanted to touch him, to reach into that dark and drag him out, but her aura was already bleeding into the air. Thin, smoky tendrils of silver-gold laced with shadow flowed from her back, her sides, and her arms. It rippled faintly around her hands as she hesitated. The air cooled, carrying a faint hum, and the smell of ozone began to fill the room.

He finally spoke. His voice was low and hoarse. “She’s still there. I can feel her.”

Her light flickered in answer: neither denial nor comfort, only recognition. Because she could still feel it too, coiling beneath his skin like a sleeping god that refused to die.

She reached for him. Her palm hovered near his back: close enough to feel the warmth of his jacket but not touching yet.

“You’re slipping,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes, as if afraid to see her, afraid of what she’d confirm.

She let the light loose. It flared from her entire body in soft white radiance, not harsh but consuming. The walls turned pale gold, the lantern dimmed, and the air itself began to sing.

Her wings unfurled from her back, feathers spilling across the narrow space: black on the outer edges, deep indigo beneath. Tiny pinpricks of light on her outer wings stretched and flickered like constellations in the night sky. The hum deepened to a low, resonant pulse that shuddered through the floorboards.

Sephiroth gasped, a faint sound that cracked open the quiet. The darkness within him recoiled.

She saw it then: the twisting filaments of alien will, silver-black threads coiling beneath his skin like veins of living shadow. The cold bite of Jenova’s madness shivered through the air between them, a vibration that prickled against her senses.

It was not just infection. No, it was far worse. it was intelligence, patient and hungry, testing the boundaries of his mind. Perhaps, since childhood. The foreign pulse within him beat against her awareness, a rhythm that did not belong to this world. It writhed beneath her gathering light, screaming in frequencies only she could hear.

She pressed her palm to his chest, feeling the heat of his skin through the leather. Her talons dug lightly into the straps, anchoring herself against him as her aura began to rise.

The air thickened, taking on a weight that trembled the lantern flame. Her wings flexed once, black and indigo feathers trembling as the energy built. The light that poured from her skin wasn’t pure anymore.

It came laced with shadow, as though holiness and corruption shared a single breath. The glow spread outward in tendrils, curling through the air like smoke. It didn’t burn him. Never him. It silenced the chaos inside him. The alien pulse faltered, and the foreign consciousness shrinking back under the slow, inexorable pull of her power.

Her aura, once radiant and clean, now shimmered with a darker pulse. It drained the room of color, replacing it with a soft grayscale haze, where the edges of objects blurred into dreamlike unreality. The life around them dimmed. Dust motes stilled, the ticking of the clock on the nightstand slowed.

Yet where her light touched him, Sephiroth’s form steadied. His breath evened. The tremor of Jenova’s will grew faint, curling back like smoke beneath a cold wind.

Bianca’s eyes glowed faintly indigo. Flecked with silver that flared and dimmed in time with her heartbeat. The aura whispered through the air. It was neither blessing nor curse, only balance restoring. What once healed now subdued. Its purpose transmuted but not lost.

She could feel it inside him, the threads of corruption loosening, the whispers growing faint until silence replaced them. It cost her. Her vision blurred, her body trembling from the drain, but she held fast. Her energy wrapped around him like a storm tamed into a lull, shadow and light merging until Jenova’s presence could only cower, beaten back into dormancy.

When she finally drew back, her palm lingered against his chest. Her halo had faded to a faint shimmer. No longer holy but still beautiful. It was a quiet defiance against the darkness that would not claim him.

This was what Celestials were born for: to subjugate and to restore balance. They were the Creator’s answer to the creeping contagions that slipped through the fractures of Existence—entities like Jenova, whose hunger devoured form, will, and reason alike. Where the horrors unmade, Celestials remade. They existed not to dominate creation but to mend its symmetry, to hold the line between order and oblivion.

Where Jenova spread corruption like a living virus, consuming worlds and rewriting matter into mockeries of life, the Celestials embodied the opposite current: purification through radiance, containment through harmony. Their very essence resonated with the Creator’s design, a living counterfrequency that quelled the chaos of the void.

In Bianca, that purpose burned brighter than most. Where Jenova was darkness incarnate—void given flesh, ruin that wore beauty as a mask—Bianca was light and darkness made sentient. Her presence did not merely oppose the darkness. It corrected and consumed it.

Her radiance carried the memory of the first breath of creation, the tone that once separated cosmos from nothingness, and Sephiroth? He was the other half of that split soul.

Each time her light rose, the corruption recoiled. The infection of madness, the whispering hunger of alien will? These things broke apart beneath her aura, not through violence but through alignment. Light meet distortion, setting it back to equilibrium. That was the sacred paradox of the Celestials. Their strength was not destruction, but restoration so complete that corruption itself lost meaning.

In the face of cosmic infection, Bianca was the countermeasure: the divine antibody. However, that burden carried a price, as magic often does.

Bianca’s vision blurred. Her knees wobbled. Her wings dimming at the edges. The baby stirred faintly inside her, as a soft ache in her lower belly, and she nearly faltered. Sephiroth caught her before she fell. His hands steadied her shoulders.

She smiled faintly through the dizziness. “You’re back,” she murmured.

When it came, His voice was barely sound. “You shouldn’t have done that. It drains you.”

“Let me worry about me, but I need to tell you something.”

The light faded to embers around them, her aura dimming to a soft halo that clung to her skin. The lantern’s flame reasserted itself, casting faint yellow across his face. His eyes, bright mako green, reflected her with quiet awe: and fear that was not for himself, as he searched her face. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to pause, suspended between the soft hum of her wings and the distant cry of wind against the shutters.

Bianca’s hands trembled against his chest. She looked small now, her black coat swallowing her frame. She dropped her hands to her stomach. Her fingers rested protectively over her abdomen. There was no fear in her expression: only exhaustion, and that strange serenity she carried when she had already accepted the cost of something sacred.

Her words were quiet, almost hesitant. “Sephiroth. . .I’m pregnant.”

TWO.

POV: Sephiroth

When she told him, the world went still. He stood still. The moment the words left her lips, the air between them shifted: charged, trembling, vast.

Sephiroth. . . I'm pregnant

He turned toward her slowly, the movement precise, as if suddenness might break the moment. Her eyes, the deep indigo of twilight skies, held no uncertainty. Only the faintest flicker of exhaustion and a bravery that always left him breathless.

His first thought wasn’t of himself. No. It never was. It was of her. Of the way she carried light in a world that punished it. And how the last few months with her unknown sickness suddenly made sense.

She continued to stare up at him in that black coat and soft sweater. Her hair spilling like ink across her shoulders. He noticed everything: the tremor in her breath, the faint protective curve of her hand over her abdomen.

He couldn’t speak at first.

Bianca filled the silence for him, as she often did.

“I didn’t mean to tell you like this,” she whispered, a soft laugh ghosting her lips. “It was supposed to be over candlelight. A romantic meal. Not like this. But I can’t hide it anymore. Not after everything you just went through. I thought you should know before. . .before Shinra and Hojo decides what to do next.”

Something deep in him recoiled at that name. Hojo’s lab. The cold gleam of instruments. The stench of antiseptic and iron, the scent of blood that had never quite washed from his memory. He could see it too easily: Bianca behind glass, her body reduced to data points and experimental readouts, her divinity dissected in the name of science. Their child, if one dared to call it that, cataloged as a specimen. A number. A failed subject.

He remembered the sound she made when they threw her back into the containment room, limp and bloodied from another procedure when she was eleven and he was thirteen.

Those were nights he had to catch her before she hit the floor, pressing trembling hands to her side to keep her organs from spilling through the half-healed incisions, praying to the Ancients her healing factor would stitch the wounds close. The smell of her—iron, pain, defiance—stayed with him. He whispered her name over and over as if the repetition could anchor her soul to the fragile body they refused to let heal.

He slept on the floor beside her then. No blanket. No light. Just the hum of the fluorescent bulbs and the rasp of her breathing. Every exhale felt like a countdown, every silence between like the edge of a grave. He was afraid to blink in case she slipped away while his eyes were closed. Some nights he thought she already had, until her hand twitched toward him, as she searched for him even in sleep.

Hojo’s voice would pierce the quiet, clinical and detached, as he ordered another round of injections. New strains of foreign DNA, grafted into her bloodstream to “observe compatibility.” Things that should never have touched divinity, let alone his Bianca. They called it science. Sephiroth would later call it desecration.

Her blood was drawn so often it became ritual. Vials upon vials of it carried away to stabilize the unstable: the cells inside her, the unstable hybrids Hojo was trying to birth, even Sephiroth’s own corrupted structure. She was made into medicine for the monsters they were forced to become.

And then there were the losses. The quiet, gutting ends that no one but him and she seemed to mourn. The first miscarriage came after his third mission. Her body was too weak to hold onto life. He had held her after she came apart in his arms, not sure what to do with his hands then. The second, a stillbirth, was so small he could cradle it in one palm. Hojo had called it a nonviable fusion. Bianca had called it her child. Sephiroth had buried the word deep enough that even his nightmares could not exhume it.

Their current child would be reduced to a sample number. He or she would, most likely, be taken from them, as Bianca was taken from her own surrogate parents.

No.

He reached for her hand. His fingers were hesitant at first, then firm. “They will not touch you,” he said quietly. “Either of you.”

“Sephiroth. . .”

He shook his head once, as he silenced her. The motion sent a strand of silver hair falling across his face, brushing against his heavy bottom lip. “Listen to me. I won’t let Shinra near you again. I told Zack earlier—before everything in the reactor, before we even left Midgar—that I might leave. I wasn’t certain then. I am now.”

“You’d leave SOLDIER?”

He nodded.

“Genesis is gone. Angeal is dead. The men I trusted most have already walked their paths. And now…” He exhaled slowly, as his gaze flicking to her abdomen, and then back up to her face. “Now there is something greater than orders.”

Her lips parted, and her expression broke into something warm, fragile, luminous. “You mean—”

“Yes,” Sephiroth said. “You and the child are my life now.”

For the first time since he signed the marriage contract, he allowed himself to feel it fully: awe, sharp and disorienting, like stepping into sunlight after years underground. As always, his mind calculated danger automatically: Shinra’s pursuit, Hojo’s curiosity, and the inevitable propaganda to cover their defection.

But beneath the logic burned something older, instinctive. The need to protect. To claim a future that was not written by men in white coats or in suits in a board room.

He brushed a thumb across her knuckles. “When Zack returns from his patrol, I will speak to him. We’ll plan our exit. Quietly, at first. He’ll understand.”

Bianca smiled faintly. “He will. He always does.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. The lantern hummed. Its flame danced weakly against the cold draft. Sephiroth’s mind drifted through memory: Angeal’s voice, calm and steady, saying you can’t carry the world alone. Genesis’s laughter before everything had fallen apart. And now, Bianca’s heartbeat echoed faintly through their bond with another heartbeat layered beneath it, depending on his or her mother and father.

He moved to the only window in the room. The glass fogged beneath his breath, blurring the reflection of his own face into something faintly spectral. Beyond it, Nibelheim lay shrouded in its usual quiet, the kind of stillness that felt more like held breath than peace.

The streets were nearly empty, lit only by the dull orange lanterns fixed to worn wooden posts. Their glow bled weakly through the creeping mist that rolled down from the mountain. White tendrils curled over the cobblestones and swallowing the edges of the square.

From this height, he could see the well tower that anchored the town’s center, a relic from a simpler time. Its beams were weathered. Around it, the homes stood in their familiar ring: steep-gabled roofs, soot-dark chimneys, and wooden walls patched with metal braces and Shinra-installed panels. All signs of modernization forced upon tradition. A handful of lights flickered behind drawn curtains. This was the rhythm of a town too small to hide its secrets and too proud to admit its decay.

He traced the line of the main road with his gaze. It curved away toward the edge of town, where the Shinra Manor loomed. Its wrought-iron fence glinting faintly through the fog. The manor’s silhouette rose like a wound against the mist. The upper windows black and unlit, as their glass reflecting only the mountain’s faint glow. A few gnarled trees leaned against its walls, skeletal in the half-light. The only signs of vegetation beyond the stubborn flowers which sprouted near doorsteps below.

In another world or life, he would be down beneath the manor, pouring over documents and tomes, as he paced the length of the library for seven, long days, discovering his origins. Instead, he was here in the inn with his pregnant wife.

A low wind passed through, rattling shutters and carrying with it the smell of damp earth and rusted metal. He let his fingers rest on the window frame, feeling the faint chill of the glass through his gloves.

Somewhere below, laughter drifted upward: Zack’s unmistakable voice, bright and unguarded, breaking through the still air as he continued on his patrol. Cloud’s quieter tones followed, hesitant but warm.

For a moment, he closed his eyes and let the sound anchor him. That simple noise felt foreign against the weight of his thoughts. The world outside this small room still breathed, still carried on with its fragile rhythms, even as everything inside him felt on the verge of collapse. The mist thickened, swallowing the square, and the laughter fading into the hum of wind and distant mountain air.

He stood there until the glass cleared again, leaving only his reflection: green eyes gleaming faintly and framed by the ghost of a town that didn’t yet know it was standing on the edge of ruin by the very corporation who controlled it.

He felt Bianca’s presence behind him again before she touched him. Her hand brushed the back of his coat, tracing the line of his spine. He turned slightly, enough to see her profile in the dim light. She looked fragile in that moment, but her eyes—those unearthly eyes with slit pupils like his—were steady.

“I don’t know what kind of world this child will be born into,” she said softly.

“One we’ll build ourselves,” he answered.

When she smiled, he caught the faint glimmer of tears. He reached up, hesitant, and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, as he always did to comfort her since he was a child. She leaned into it. Her eyes closed briefly, and for once the walls around him didn’t feel like prison bars.

He pulled her gently closer until her forehead rested against his chest. His hand hovered a moment above her back, then settled there between her wings. The scent of her wrapped around him.

“I love you,” he said quietly. It was not dramatic. Not even loud. But it felt like a vow carved into the bones of the world.

“I know. I always did.” Her response came in a whisper. “I love you, too.”

The lantern burned lower. The mountain wind rattled the windowpane, as the night continued to give way to the early morning.

Three.

POV: Bianca

Morning came gray and heavy. The mist was so thick it blurred the mountain peaks into one pale sweep of silver.

They stood at the edge of town, near the wooden posts with the sign above them that read Nibelheim. Behind them, the village was still intact: no smoke, no ash, only whispers. Word had already spread, though. The great Hero of Shinra, Sephiroth, and the Angel of Shinra, Bianca Moore, had defected.

Zack adjusted the strap of his suspenders. His usual grin tempered by quiet determination. Cloud stood beside him. The blue of his uniform muted in the fog, as his blue eyes flicked between the three of them with silent trust.

Bianca’s wings unfurled as she stepped closer to the men. Her light rippled out in a soft wave, washing over them: warm, steady, and a shield more felt than seen. The hum of her aura threaded through the mountain air, brushing over each of them in turn.

Sephiroth stood at her side. One hand rested protectively on the small of her back, the other on the hilt of Masamune, as the seven foot blade pointed behind him and curved in a gentle slope.

She turned to look up at him. His expression was calm but resolute. His hair lifted slightly in the cold wind. When she placed her hand over his and guided it to her stomach, he didn’t flinch.

“Whatever Shinra does next,” she said, her voice steady, “we’ll face it together. You, me, Zack, Cloud. We’ll build something new, something that protects those who can’t fight for themselves.”

Zack’s smile returned. It was fierce this time. “You’ve already got a name for it, don’t you?”

Bianca’s lips curved. “The Vanguard.”

The word hung in the air, simple and unyielding. They began to walk down the road that wound toward the ridge that would take them in the direction of Wutai’s distant forests which lay far beyond. The ground crunched under their boots. The sound was small against the sweep of the wind. Behind them, the town receded: its quiet streets, its well at the center. Its secret atop the mountain lay dormant again.

As they reached the last bend, a single black feather drifted down from the sky, catching the pale light as it fell. It landed in the dust behind them, perfectly still.

Bianca slowed. Her steps faltered just enough for the others to notice. The air around them seemed to hold its breath. She turned, eyes tracing the path of the feather as if it might rise again, caught by some unseen current.

Nothing moved. No wings cut the air above. No shadow crossed the mist-thick road. Just the quiet weight of something unseen watching. Her hand brushed lightly against her side, near where Noctemaris hung: out of instinct, not fear.

Zack kept talking. His laughter was still easy in the cooling dusk. Cloud followed close behind him. His gaze was low, as his head was full of thoughts he’d never say aloud.

Only Bianca’s eyes lingered on the feather. Her mind turned over the possibilities. It could have been from one of the great birds that nested along the cliffs. Or it could have meant something else: something celestial, or fallen, alien, or a feather she seen in her darkest dreams. She didn’t tell them which thought she favored, as her fingers tightened slightly around Sephiroth’s.

When she finally moved again, the feather stayed where it had fallen. Unclaimed and untouched. A trace of black in a world turning silver with fog. She knew better than to take it as omen or proof.

Yet even as they walked on, the image wouldn’t leave her: one perfect feather, ink-dark and gleaming faintly in the emerging light.

Still, she wouldn't dwell on it for long. After all, this was the part where her and her friends would try to live happily ever after, as they fought to take back the Planet for her child and others.

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Everyone is in the mess hall, eating breakfast and talking about today’s training. The talk quickly turns to Jamie’s absence from the mess hall.”It’s not like her to sleep in,” Ghost says. “Especially when she knows it’s a training day.”“I’ll go check on her,” Price says as he stands from his seat. The others know he’s prepared to scold Jamie.

Price enters Jamie’s room without knocking. He sees her in bed. He approaches the bed, ready to scold her. “Don’t get too close,” Jamie warns before coughing. ”Don’t be ridiculous.” Price feels Jamie’s forehead. “You’re burning up.” He goes into the bathroom to find the thermometer.

A few minutes later, Price discovers Jamie has the flu. “I told you to wear a scarf,” Price scolds, remembering Jamie’s refusal to wear one on the mission a few days ago. “Like that would have helped.” “Ok, you’re right. You might have been sick already, or someone else here is sick. I’ll be right back with medicine.”

When Price walks into the room with medicine, he sees Jamie struggling to stay awake. He was hoping to get her to eat first. Instead, he gives her the medicine and lets her rest. Price promises to come back in a few hours.

His words are soft, like they used to be when she was just a child running to him after a nightmare. Only reaching his knees, she would pull on his blankets until he lifted her up to his chest. The world felt so big back then, but she knew he would always protect her.

Even though she’s taller now, she still wants him to hold her like back then. Even though she’s a goddess reborn, she wants someone else to shield her from the evil that hides in the darkness under her bed.

But this never happened. Instead of comforting arms, Zelda was embraced in ice and amber; centuries alone, believing she was horrible because of Hylia’s actions.

We wanted to surprise you, Link signs with a pink face. He has a scar on his hand from where Ghirahm’s dagger cut him early in his journey, and Zelda’s fingers twitch in the urge to heal. But somehow we messed up the recipe.

Zelda blinks at the signs, flabbergasted at how they messed up. Aren’t they using Henya’s book? How do they manage to do that— she’s notorious about detailed instructions!

Her dad seems to see something in how she holds herself. Maybe it’s the way she hunches herself to appear smaller, weaker, or maybe it’s the distant gaze in her eyes. Maybe he senses how she desperately wants to feel normal again, because he nudges her closer with gentle hands.

“Why don’t you take a look and see if you can help us?” He’s presenting this hopeless cause as a puzzle, one that Zelda gladly takes into her hands as a means of distraction.

Link moves beside her, and she doesn’t think as she leans into his side. Strong arms wrap around her as she looks between the pot and the book, lips thin as she tries to figure out what went wrong.

She feels safe in the familiar atmosphere. It’s a lot like when they were children, Henya teaching them to cook as her dad watched in the background. Link would always mess up the dishes— always putting too much salt or never letting the stove cook for enough time.

Or, and Zelda remembers this as she looks to the stove, never putting the correct heat for cooking.

“You both have it on too low,” she hums. Her dad looks soft as he fixes the heat, not bothering to tease the two teenagers hugging, “Also, I think you forgot to add nutmeg again.”

The look switches to one of panic. Link tugs her back as her dad rushes to the pantries, peering around for the nutmeg with a mutter of “Did we even remember to restock it?”

There’s a tap to her shoulder, and she turns to Link’s watchful gaze. He’s been studying her, she guesses. Worried, most likely. He looks just as exhausted as she feels.

He takes her by her hand, calloused and rough, soothing as he rubs circles into her knuckles. He signs to her dad, and she leans her head to his shoulder as they move away.

The warmth of the kitchen cools as the door closes, and with Link around her waist, she feels grounded in his hold. No chill creeps on her, no sense of wrongness freezes her chest, and no empty feeling steals her happiness away.

As always, when it comes to Link, she feels real in his hold. And the loud sounds of pans crashing through a wall remind her of the liveliness of mortality. She feels at home. She will always feel at home as long as her family keeps reminding her how she’s alive again.

She’s not frozen in time or trapped in the expectations of a goddess. She’s a daughter, a friend, and a student. She’s wanted, and loved, and appreciated.

Poppy narrowed her eyes at Ian in suspicion. “Okay, why did you get me a gift?”

Ian shrugged, putting on his best innocent expression. It didn’t fool her for a second. “I don’t need a reason to give my partner a gift, do I?”

She crossed her arms and waited him out. As usual, he caved pretty fast.

“Okay, fine. It’s an anniversary present.”