There was someone in Sephiroth's head.

He didn't know who, or what, except that it wasn't himself. It didn't feel like him. It was just a hint of something foreign, brushing the edge of his mind. He had noticed it a while ago and brushed it off as a delusion, or exhaustion. It would go away.

It didn't go away.

He considered telling the lab assistant who sometimes gave him sweets behind Hojo's back. But she hadn't taken it seriously when he told her about his dreams of having a wing. She might not believe him about this either, even though he was six years old now.

The presence didn't say anything. It just sat, distant and quiet in the corner of his mind. Watching? He didn't know. Weeks passed and nothing changed, so he stopped paying attention to it. He said nothing when Hojo asked if he had anything to report after giving him a new type of Mako bath.

He laid on his thin mattress afterwards and found it difficult to breathe. It felt like he had a heavy weight on his chest. He put two fingers on his wrist and counted his pulse. Sluggish.

Hojo must have gotten the solution for the Mako bath wrong after all. Perhaps he was dying. That would certainly show Hojo, he thought idly. He didn't much care. Spiting Hojo was the most exciting aspect of the situation. Although being out of Hojo's reach would be nice too.

He closed his eyes and let out a stuttering breath.

The presence in his mind jolted. He frowned.

It sighed around his mind, just on the edge of hearing.

Survive.

His eyes opened.

It sighed through his thoughts again, stronger this time, insistent. Willing him to get up, do something about it.

Survive.

He sighed aloud in response. He didn't… didn't really want to survive. Didn't care.

It cared. Or it felt like it did.

Sucking in a hoarse breath, he slid off the bed and staggered to the locked door. He let his head fall against it with a thud. Then he raised his hand and knocked, loud and insistent. He kept going until a guard noticed. Forty-three knocks. The guard fetched Hojo, and the presence subsided.

He survived.

Brandy sat slumped against a wall and felt like crying. It was too hot and her head felt like it was stuffed with wool. She'd been out in the sun all day yesterday and her face was all blisters now. Her vision kept going black and blurry. She hadn't had anything to eat since… since…

The mall security hadn't let her sit inside. Brett and his friends had chased her out of the shade by the fish and chip shop.

It was so hot it had gone all the way round and felt cold again. She knew that was bad, because, because…

She swore and sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She did not know what to do, damnit. She wasn't going to let something as stupid as the sun keep her down.

The heat stung her sunburnt face. She needed to get cold. The ocean was cold; she could go sit in it. The ocean was in the sun, her hazy mind supplied.

She didn't know which way the beach was.

Panic climbed up her throat and made her gulp air. She didn't want to die. She didn't know what to do.

Something foreign jostled in the back of her mind. It wasn't a noise, it felt like the absence of noise. Calm, clear silence.

It spread out, overriding the panic and static of her addled mind. She blinked. Her vision was hazy, but she did know where she was. She was in the alley behind the Pho place on King Street. There was a library a block away. They gave away free bottles of water this time of year.

In the forced silence of her mind, she knew she might pass out before she got there. If she was on a main street, at least someone might call an ambulance. The hospital would probably try to send her back to the foster home, but that was a problem for later. It was still a better option than dying of heatstroke alone in an alleyway. She staggered to her feet and began the trek.

The foreign calm didn't fade away until the blast of cool air from the library entrance swept over her. Her legs collapsed out from under her. Someone she couldn't see through blotches in her vision helped her sit up, and held a cool bottle of water to her lips.

She was going to bloody well make it.

It was years before Sephiroth heard the word 'soulmate'. He'd long ago dubbed the stubborn presence in his head his secret friend. It hadn't occurred to him that others might have one too, because his secret friend was his secret and his alone. Even Hojo couldn't reach it.

He didn't think they were in a lab, whoever they were. Not long after they appeared, he started having different dreams. Dreams where he was out under a big blue sky, somewhere completely flat. It was always hot and dusty there. When the lab assistants told him about Outside, he'd pictured a blue sky instead of the ceiling, but it hadn't dawned on him that there really were no walls out there. Just… space. Empty and dusty, stretching away forever.

He suspected this was where they lived, and felt his hypothesis had been verified when one day, without warning, he found himself seeing a tiny dirty street and feeling too hot. He couldn't hear anything and what he could see overlaid the familiar sight of his room. Odd, he wouldn't have thought it possible to see two things at once. He tried focusing on one, and then the other, and found he could easily distinguish the two sights.

He felt… stretched out somehow. Was he a distant presence in their mind too? He liked that idea. Was he supposed to tell them to survive?

He tried speaking, squinting his eyes and pushing thoughts at the second set of images, at the humming little connection point.

It didn't feel like it was working.

The view changed, they were walking somewhere. The ground was further away than he expected. They must be tall. Or older? He tried to take in as much as possible for further analysis later. A building came into view and then the picture drifted away and the sensation of being stretched subsided.

Fascinating. He spent the next week poring over every detail he could remember. It was difficult to reach any concrete conclusions because all the evidence he had was vague feelings. Feelings weren't scientific, Hojo said.

He smiled a very unscientific smile. He suspected he had been helping his secret friend the way they had helped him. He didn't think he had actually told them to survive; they didn't feel like they needed to be told. But he must have done something, because they started acting after he felt the connection. He was their secret friend too. He liked that.

It was entirely by accident he learned that there was already a name for the phenomenon.

Two of the lab assistants were gossiping at their desks. The nice lady looked upset.

"I just want them to be safe," she said, looking guiltily at the floor. "I don't want to lose my soulmate."

The other assistant sighed. "I know," he replied, his hand softly caressing her arm.

Sephiroth suspected this was about sex. It usually was when adults touched each other. Hojo had explained the mechanics of the biological imperative. He didn't see the appeal.

"There's nothing you can do. They're in Wutai, and Wutai is… well," the male assistant finished awkwardly.

She sniffled. "I know. I can't do anything. They're going to march off to fight and die and all I can do is watch."

"They might not go. They could be practising sword fighting as a hobby."

She scoffed. "Of course. Shinra declares war on Wutai and then they decide they'd like to take up a sword again just for fun?"

"Well, what do you want me to say?"

"I just… I'm sorry. I'm very happy with… with us. But they're a part of me, they've been in my mind for over a decade. You can't understand—"

"I can't understand because I don't have a soulmate. Yes. I'm aware," he replied.

"That's not what I meant."

It devolved into bickering and Sephiroth stopped listening.

A soulmate. Was that what his secret friend was? They were in his head, and he supposed in a sense he could say they were a part of him.

Soul mate. A mate for his soul?

Hojo said souls weren't real. He was probably just jealous, like the lab assistant, because he didn't have a soulmate.

It was a little disappointing that other people had their own secret friends too. But it sounded like not everyone got one. He was glad he did. He was glad he had the one he did, out under that big blue sky somewhere.

Brandy had refused to believe she had a soulmate for as long as possible. She refused to believe they even existed.

She insisted to herself it had just been desperation and heatstroke. The dreams of white lab coats and needles were just weird dreams, nothing unusual there. And they could be really bloody weird sometimes, with what looked like cage fights against warped monsters. It was a bit harder to deny when she had the dreams while awake. There were a hell of a lot of needles, and green gloop inside them. Sometimes all she saw was a sea of green gloop like they were swimming in it. Whoever was on the other end must have been some sickly kid in a hospital, tripping on medication.

She had never trusted the idea of it. Her mum used to talk about the floods of kindness she'd feel, before her own soulmate had died, whoever they had been. To Brandy it just sounded like a bad excuse for never having any kindness of her own.

Common belief was that once the connection had appeared, around puberty for whichever of the pair was oldest, the two would share each other's greatest strengths when their emotions were heightened. Or their most prominent traits. Reports were mixed. Something about sharing burdens. She suspected it was just a fairy tale grown-ups clung to. Something to tell themselves when they were lonely, or to reassure their partners. 'Of course we're meant to be, we're soulmates!' It wasn't like you could prove any of it.

But she'd gotten used to the little bubble of calm hanging around in the back of her head. It didn't feel like her. She was angry and desperate, while it just felt…cold? Analytical somehow.

What did that say about whomever was on the other side? Were they just incapable of panicking? Maybe they were a Turian, their kind were pretty emotionless, right? She wondered what they got from her end.

Poor judgement probably, she thought, cradling the stolen rifle. The rest of the gang would be sneaking up to the warehouse below pretty soon. She took a deep breath, nerves fluttering in her stomach. She didn't want to do this. It was stupid, they shouldn't be here. People were going to die.

People had already died, her rebellious mind supplied.

She hadn't meant for this to happen. Being part of the Reds had sounded like a good idea when it meant somewhere to sleep and someone to watch her back. Then they'd said it was her turn to watch their backs and put a gun in her hands. Prove you belong.

Turned out she was a damn good shot.

Her soulmate deserved someone better.

She could see three security cameras watching the back entrances to the warehouse from her spot on the roof. She breathed as slowly as possible while lining up the shot. She'd heard somewhere that it helped.

Silence stretched out from the back of her mind. It wasn't just a blanket of quiet anymore, but a razor sharp focus. She shot out the three cameras, one two three. The others rushed out of their hiding spot and forced the warehouse door open.

The rival gang came flooding out to meet them, handguns already cocked. Chaos erupted in screams and gunshots. She sat above it all, focused, silent, pulling the trigger.

She was a damn good shot.

Two years later, a Jane Shepard signed up for the Systems Alliance Navy. As far as anyone knew, Brandy had died in a gang war in Western Australia.

The following year Sephiroth was sent to Wutai, a sword in his hand.

Sephiroth woke from a dream about the stars to a flood of adrenaline and the word SURVIVE roaring through his brain. He rolled off his bed just before a sword slashed through his pillow.

He kicked out, smashing the ninja's knee. The attacker staggered back, and Sephiroth ran him through with the knife he kept under his pillow.

The ninja collapsed. Sephiroth yelled out they were under attack and stalked out into the night, leaving the others in the tent still blinking awake.

The mental channel between them had widened over the years. Where once sensation had merely trickled through, now the will to survive flooded him, stubborn and impossible to argue with. Alone, surrounded by Wutai soldiers and wielding only a knife, it cared so strongly for his survival that he cared a little bit too.

One of them cut open his arm. Unacceptable.

By the time the entire camp was up and alert, he had already finished the ninja off. He volunteered to go and search the perimeter. The captain gladly sent him off. None of the other SOLDIERS really wanted him there, and they made sure he knew it. They didn't like having a twelve year old in their platoon, let alone one who was better than them. They got angry when he said as much. They got even angrier when he shrugged off their attempted attack. They couldn't shrug off his.

His fellow soldiers usually left him alone now. He still preferred to get away as often as he could. Especially at night, when he could look up at the stars.

He'd asked Hojo for books on astronomy the last time he went back to Midgar for a Mako booster. Hojo had been very excited at the request and gotten them immediately, but Sephiroth was only disappointed.

The stars over Gaia weren't the stars he saw in his dreams. Or at least, they weren't in the same positions. That meant his soulmate was on a different planet. Inconvenient. He sighed. He attempted to triangulate their position, but for all that he saw the night sky frequently in the dreams, it was never really in focus. And even if he could, then what? Shinra probably wouldn't let him join the Space Program, and besides, they hadn't even reached space yet. His astronomy book said the nearest star was over five light years away.

The stars were so clear over Wutai. Not like Midgar, where even the moon could barely shine through. He traced Leviathan's tail with his finger, the points of the spine and then the four stars flaring out in a tail fin. It was beautiful.

He wondered if his soulmate thought so. They saw a lot more of it than he did. He hadn't seen the dusty plains under the big blue sky in years. It was all stars now. Stars and guns.

Machine-gun fire thundered through the radios, almost drowning out the screaming.

Shepard dived behind a pile of rocks, fumbling for her rifle. She pointed it at the closest thresher maw and fired wildly. Its armoured scale didn't even look scratched.

Most of the unit was down. The hiss of oxygen venting into the vacuum echoed over the radio. She stumbled over a body.

One of the threshers hurled its acid spit at the machine-gun. The tank it was mounted on swerved and the projectile missed the gun but hit the back of the tank instead. It melted open, unsealing the interior. The tank continued on its trajectory until it crashed into a flipped shuttle. The soldier on the gun kept on firing, but as soon as the tank was stationary the thresher maw dived down onto it, swallowing it whole.

Another thresher simply fell on its side and rolled over the soldiers trying to run away. Then it shrank back into the earth and reappeared at a different angle to scrape the crushed remains up and into its mouth.

The five threshers retreated into the ground again. Shepard clutched her useless rifle. Adrenaline was coursing through her and making her shake uncontrollably. She could hear the screams still. Nobody was standing anymore, but the thresher maws had done this before—disappeared below the surface and then waited until the humans thought the danger had passed and would come out from hiding to help the injured and collect the dead. Then the giant worms sprung back up again and it would all start over.

The screams and whimpers were quieter than the last time the threshers had gone down. Shepard held her breath and listened. It wasn't a chorus of pain anymore. There was just the one voice left.

Shepard closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing down. She couldn't not go.

"Don't move," she managed to say, struggling to force the sounds past her lips. "I'm… I'm coming."

She started to crawl, shuffling forward, painfully slow. Her helmet was cracked, but the overhead display still worked, and she could see the blip of a living ally to the south. She focused on that blip. The silence crept up on her, blocking out the shakes of her adrenaline. She'd fallen out of it a couple of times during the fight, the chaos just too much. She latched onto it now.

The horror of the fight. The acid eaten corpses she crawled past. The screams which had all died away. She let the silence and calm override it and focused on moving. Getting to the survivor.

It was achingly slow, but in the calmness she realised it must have been the tremors caused by their stomping around that drew the thresher maws. It had to be how they knew when to pop up again when they'd all come out of hiding.

She hoped, desperately, that her soulmate wasn't seeing this.

She made it to the survivor. They were passed out, but still breathing. With false calm she examined them, the broken bones and punctured lungs. There was nothing she could do for them. Medi-gel wouldn't fix it and the distress beacon had already been set up. She held him and waited.

By the time the help arrived, the man in her arms was dead.

She stayed in that calm silence until she was back on the ship. It wasn't until Captain Anderson asked her what had happened that it finally broke. She broke with it.

Sephiroth blinked away from the carnage.

Angeal was looking at him curiously.

The words 'my whole unit is dead' lodged in his throat. It wasn't true. His unit was perfectly fine. But he'd seen that loss, he had felt it. He'd seen the grief in a commanding officer's face, quietly asking him to report on the catastrophe.

His hand twitched to feel for an oxygen line at his neck. He glared at it and held still. A half-finished report still sat on his desk, pen poised in his hand. How long had he been sitting there?

"Other half needed you, sir?" Angeal asked.

He cleared his throat.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Angeal nodded slowly. "Genesis gets that look sometimes, you know. Like his mind is half a world away."

"It doesn't happen to you?" Sephiroth asked. The older boy had been respectful, albeit friendly, with him for the few month's they'd known each other. But he'd never talked about this before, not with anyone.

Angeal shook his head, a small, sad smile on his lips. "But I'm glad you've got someone, sir. What are they like?"

He remembered crawling past corpses to get to a dying man he had no way of helping. They were stubborn.

He cleared his throat again. "That was an unusual situation. You don't need to worry, I'm not going to lose focus in the middle of a fight." If necessary he was certain he could block it out during an emergency. They had never actually had a moment when they were both in a dire situation; could the current flow both ways at the same time?

Angeal blinked and concern flashed through his expression. "Are they alright?"

"No." He looked up at the canvas ceiling of the tent. "They aren't."

Shepard gritted her teeth.

Somewhere her soulmate was in the middle of a war. She went to N school with nightly dreams of ambushes and swordfights and slaughter. No amount of research could find any ongoing armed conflicts, and she couldn't even find any cultures still using swords for anything besides ceremony. She couldn't protect her unit at Akuze, and she couldn't protect them either.

She reached N7, having weaponised their connection to the utmost extent. No longer was it a vague tug beyond her control, she could pick up a rifle at any moment and enter a world of complete calm at will. She suspected they did something similar at their end. She saw how they fought, the hideous things they did in pursuit of victory. She felt them in her mind at her lowest moments, her worst decisions. They shared their shame in the night, spilt blood dripping at both ends of the connection.

Sovereign came, heralding the Reapers, and she gritted her teeth. She couldn't save her unit. She couldn't save her soulmate, wherever they were. But so help her, she could save the damn galaxy.

So she did.

He didn't dwell on it very often anymore. Sephiroth knew exactly how to trigger the roaring insistence on survival that latched onto his spine and wouldn't permit anything else. It was a useful asset, and when the Wutai surrounded him with their greatest monsters and summons and left him for dead, he let it consume him till all fell before him. It was just another part of him, no more interesting than his hand.

The dreams, though.

Hojo summoned him back from the front under the pretence of giving him a check-up and renewing all his Mako shots, but Sephiroth wasn't fooled. Hojo wanted to make sure he didn't forget who held the leash, so he didn't get too used to giving commands and going where he chose to go.

He said as much to Hojo and was sentenced to a Mako bath for his troubles.

In his dreams he saw the stars. Planets he couldn't name. Monsters beyond anything on Gaia. Space shooting past a starship window in a magnificent blur. His soulmate traversed the galaxy, under their own command.

He resented it. The flashes of freedom so far beyond his reach. He wanted it so badly, to fight those armoured worms himself, to see that massive space station. To walk empty celestial bodies nobody else had ever set foot on.

He could block it out when he was awake, he barely even noticed them tugging on his mind when they needed to now. But he couldn't block out the images in his sleep.

He woke from a dream of exploring ancient ruins on a moon with no atmosphere and hated his soulmate for taunting him with it.

The next night he woke to silence. He blinked and looked around the dark room. He held still and listened. Nothing, no heartbeat or quiet footfall, nobody was trying to break in and assassinate him.

It was utterly silent. His own breathing sounded deafening. Something was wrong. He looked around again, but there was definitely nobody there, nobody at all. Should there have been? He got up, frowning and looking around. Why was it so quiet?

Had he been dreaming? He rolled his shoulders and suspected his soulmate had been calling on him in his sleep, his mind still carried that certain strain to it, a bit more than was normal these days in fact. He remembered… remembered seeing space, and a planet below.

A flash of fire in space, strained gasping, and then nothing.

He reached for the connection.

Nothing.

He frowned and reached again – nothing. It hit him.

He sucked in a harsh breath. The world wasn't silent, his mind was. It wasn't there, they weren't there. There was no quiet hum, softly insinuating the need to survive until he called on it and made it roar. He reached for the connection again, searching the corner of his mind which had always held them, but the line was broken.

They were gone. He sank to the floor.

He suddenly felt hollow. His stomach lurched like he was going to throw up and he put a hand over his mouth. He knew deep in his gut that they were dead. They'd suffocated in space, where no amount of stubbornness could save them.

He sat on the floor for hours, empty and alone.

Sephiroth returned to the front and threw himself into the fight. He didn't bother parrying, more often than not. He was faster than everyone else, so much faster, he reasoned he didn't really need to. And when they hit him, well, they'd earned it. Or they were just lucky.

His healing rate made up for it.

Usually. He wouldn't weep if it didn't.

One day, a samurai got really lucky.

Genesis finished the samurai off and found him, nearly bisected on the ground. Later, Sephiroth heard all about how Genesis had dragged him off the field and poured so much magical healing into him that he'd nearly knocked himself out.

It made for an awkward meeting with his captains the next week.

Genesis glared at him. Angeal looked deeply concerned. Sephiroth looked at the tent wall between them.

"We need to discuss the reports of Wutai activity to the west," he said. He ignored the impulse to readjust the mass of bandages around his torso.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do you think we're just not going to talk about it?" Genesis replied.

"There's nothing to talk about. We have work to do."

"There wouldn't be anything to talk about if you didn't think you were too good to parry! Or even just duck!"

"Sephiroth, we're worried," Angeal said, gesturing at Genesis to calm down.

"We all know you're fast enough," Genesis said, ignoring him completely and pointing a finger threateningly at Sephiroth. "I saw that swing coming. You could have gotten out of the way."

Sephiroth pursed his lips and said nothing.

"Is something wrong?" Angeal asked, insufferably gentle. "Tell us how we can help you."

"Nothing is wrong."

Genesis snorted.

"I notice you don't get that far off look in your eyes anymore," Angeal said. "Did something happen?"

Sephiroth looked away. "They're dead."

"Oh," Genesis said, his shoulders sinking.

"Don't." Sephiroth spat. He shook his head. "Don't. I don't… want you help. I don't need anything."

They looked at him in awkward silence. He ignored it and went over the reports.

Sephiroth sat in his old, favourite stargazing spot, and looked down. The top of the watch tower wasn't made for sitting on. The concrete roof was cold and rough.

Genesis sat next to him. "Mine's dead too," he said.

Sephiroth stopped trying to make him disappear by force of will and looked at him.

Genesis was leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at the stars wistfully.

"What happened?"

He shook his head. "A stupid accident. She got hit by a car."

"She?" He'd never really wondered at the gender of his own. There was so much he'd never get to know.

"She was a sex worker living in Wutai City," Genesis said quietly. "I always wondered… what would happen when we took the capital? Seems I needn't have worried."

"I see."

"I've never told anyone about her like this. Not even Angeal." Genesis took a deep breath, like he was winding himself up. "She cared about people. So much. It… it shook me sometimes, the way she found the time to care about everyone else. The women she worked with, their children. Even some of the men she catered to. It wasn't as though her life was easy, she had more than enough to worry about already, and yet she…" He swallowed and his head dropped. "'There is no hate, only joy, for you are beloved by the goddess."' He sighed. "I admired her. I was… better for having known her."

Sephiroth nodded, unsure what he was supposed to say.

"What did she get from you?" he asked tentatively.

"I like to think she got my drive," Genesis replied with a flip of his hair. "Or maybe my ambition. It could just be that she got my anger. I flatter myself I helped her defend herself a number of times."

"And what did you get from her?"

He looked at Sephiroth. "Concern for people who aren't me," he said seriously. "She wouldn't be able to watch you try to kill yourself with your own apathy without trying to help. As she's not here, I'll have to do it for her."

Sephiroth looked away. "I wasn't trying to…"

"It gets better."

He let out a slow breath. "Does it?"

"Yes. It does."

They sat in silence. Sephiroth dared a look up at the stars. He'd almost managed to triangulate their position once, but then they'd taken to moving around so much it didn't matter. All the stars were theirs as far as he was concerned.

"What was yours like?" Genesis asked.

The words came to mind easily, but it took a moment to force himself to speak them. "Angry. Brave. Stubborn." He shook his head, his eyes jumping from star to star, tracing the magnificent expanse of the Milky Way. "They wouldn't… they wouldn't stop fighting. No matter how ridiculous the odds. They had no enhancements, they fought alone more often than not, but they refused to let go. They lived, furious and desperate."

"It sounds like they were living for two," Genesis said, looking at him from the corner of his eye. "They'd be ashamed of you, you know."

"You don't know," Sephiroth hissed back.

"No? Because it sounds like you relied on their conviction to even bother getting up in the morning."

He swallowed his vitriol, feeling too exposed. "I'm here, aren't I? I'm still fighting."

"You call this fighting?" Genesis ran a frustrated hand through his hair and cursed. "Look, I don't… care, easily, about people. But I'm trying. This takes effort. But I am trying. I care about whether or not you live or die, and I'm going to keep caring, even though it doesn't come naturally to me." His shoulders slumped and he looked him in the eye. "I need you to try, Sephiroth."

The silence stretched out between them, and Sephiroth looked down.

"I'll… try," he said quietly.

"Thank you," Genesis breathed. "It does get better, I swear it does."

Sephiroth gave a non-committal nod.

Things got better.

Sephiroth tried. Most days he succeeded.

It was a long two years. He stopped thinking about dying. He got used to the silence in his head, but he learned how to fill up his life with new activity. Genesis and Angeal cared, and he owed it to them to at least put some effort into caring himself. The war ended. The SOLDIERs were recalled to Midgar. Life carried on.

One day, two years later and quite without warning, the connection came roaring back to life.

Sephiroth was doing pull-ups in his study, counting the reps and enjoying the mild strain on his muscles. His vision suddenly doubled, and he cried out and let go of the bar. Everything looked hazy. There was a drain on his focus so sudden and strong it nearly bowled him over.

Screaming iron will spiked through him, and he reached wildly for his sword, but he wasn't under attack.

He wasn't alone either. The connection in his mind re-established itself as though it had never gone anywhere, strong and steady. There was confusion and anger on the other end. He recognised the distinctive design patterns everything in space had, but something about the hazy image transferred to him was familiar in a different way.

They were in a lab. And they weren't happy about it. He felt the channel between them flowing strongly while they found a gun and solved the problem. Then it retreated back to a quiet hum in the back of his mind, still present, but not active.

He leaned on a table and gasped for breath. The he threw the curtains open and looked out into the night sky.

They were back. How-? It didn't matter. There were back. They were his and they had come back.

There were no stars visible through the Midgar smog, but he knew they were up there. Somewhere, impossibly far away, but there nonetheless.

He leaned against the glass and cried.

Sephiroth had thought they were angry before. Now they were furious. He could feel them raging in his dreams, it hummed in the back of his mind. The pull was almost constant now, but he relearned swiftly how to ignore it, how to keep the channel open without compromising himself. While the drain on his focus was stronger, so too was the insistence on survival. It made him much more dangerous.

He took to killing monsters with a single strike. Don't permit them a return strike, don't give any ground at all. Genesis and Angeal saw and were alternately worried and glad he'd found such drive.

He was worried too. The flashes and dreams he got were… terrifying. The massive armoured worms were like a happy memory in comparison. The stars themselves were under attack. His soulmate had fallen once before. The enemy had only gotten stronger.

He looked to the skies, and was afraid for them.

He woke up one morning to flashes of hazy light. It was some kind of explosion he thought. There was only the weakest presence on the other end of the connection.

He breathed out and feared he was losing them again.

It didn't go away. The strange haze continued all through the morning. It made no sense to him, but then much of what he saw made no sense.

He yawned and worked through reports on the newest batch of SOLDIER recruits.

The imaged changed, the light died away. He blinked up to check on them. They were in a lab again. The explosion must have injured them.

He returned his attention to the reports.

Then he froze and looked back up. That wasn't a space lab. That was Hojo's lab in the Shinra building.

He launched himself up and out the door, practically flying down the stairs. Flashes of blood and anger seeped through the connection.

He burst through the doors.

A red-headed woman with a fierce scowl and a stubbornly set jaw put a bullet through Hojo's skull.

Reflexive instincts had him drawing his sword as the scientist fell. The rifle swung around to point at him. The drain of focus and iron will spiked in both directions and he saw a flash of – of himself.

She stared at him, and the rifle wavered. He lowered his sword, speechless.

It was them-her-his.

She was here. She was alive.

She'd killed Hojo.

She swung the weapon onto her back and marched towards him. He took a step back, overwhelmed.

She embraced him. He stiffened, utterly out of his depth, but she didn't seem to care, wrapping her arms around him like they were old friends.

In a way, they were. His oldest friend. He hugged her back.