Disclaimer – I can barely afford to put petrol in my car, let alone buy the rights to a franchise this big.

A/N – I searched and searched, but I couldn't find anywhere with a reliable note of Angeal's age, so I used my initiative and fiddled about a bit to make this fic fit. If I've got I heinously wrong then I apologise, but I went by the age bracket I thought he looked in the game. Set in pre-canon Crisis Core timeline.

Father Figure

© Scribbler, April 2008.

Angeal would've liked to say he knew straight away, but in truth it was a few months after he first saw the new bunch of cadets that he realised. They were a likely lot, full of the usual no-hopers, wide-eyed innocents and hero-worshippers the SOLDIER programme attracted. None of them stood out as extraordinary.

That is, until he was dispatched to oversee a group of them in training. He arrived to find them doing what generations of new recruits had done before them – messing around until someone in authority turned up. Angeal watched them from the mezzanine around the arena: some stood in groups, a couple of loners leaned against walls or sat on the floor, and a couple were even throwing jokey punches at each other.

One cadet moved from group to group, not sticking to a single clique like the others. For all their heads were filled with thoughts of mako and swordplay, these were still thirteen and fourteen year old boys and the number one rule of how to be a teenager applied here as much as anywhere else: stick with your own kind. 'Kind' was determined by various factors, from nationality to the general divisions of jocks, nerds and dreamers, and the boundaries were more heavily defended than Wutai's borders. What was more surprising was that this boy was accepted into whatever group he went to, with no malice or reprimand as he strolled away to another. His smile was like a skeleton key that allowed him admission wherever he went.

When Angeal finally made them aware of his presence, he kept an eye on him. The boy gave as good as he got in hand-to-hand training, and seemed to a have a flair dampened only by youthful recklessness. He took unnecessary risks, pulling off victories that were spectacular but only a hairsbreadth from being total failures, and kept up his inane grinning throughout.

"You there," Angeal barked.

"Sir?" The boy turned, mussed hair in his eyes. He pushed it aside and that single, simple movement was what did it.

Angeal had been only just past cadet level himself, on his first proper mission in some godforsaken place where mosquitoes outnumbered people ten-thousand to one. His unit was stationed in a village where the populace hadn't yet learned to fear Shinra's logo. They were welcomed with open arms. Local girls brought them food and drink, batting their eyelashes at the foreign men, who adored their attention. This was what they joined up for – fame and glory, exotic locales and even more exotic women. They loved the uniformly fair-haired, fair-skinned women, all tall and willowy compared to Midgar's hardened females, who walked like they carried the Plate on their backs.

Angeal, severe even at that age, resisted the pull of his comrades, more concerned with the mission they'd been sent there for than who he could bed. Thus he was left alone, poring over maps and reports at his table, where soulful blue eyes could find him as pale hands cleared away dishes.

She was the tavern owner's daughter and not allowed to fraternise with the local men beyond marriage interviews. What passed during that month was something of a shock for both of them. Many times Angeal looked at the delicate thing curled against his side and wondered what had happened. Sometimes he asked her and she blinked up at him, pushing hair from her eyes and murmuring what she thought he wanted to hear. When his unit left she didn't come to wave him goodbye, too busy serving meals and shouting orders through to the tavern cook to gather with the other weepy girls on the edge of town.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Fair, sir."

Not her surname, which meant she must've married soon after he left. Angeal was certain, though. He remembered reading the files of those he was overseeing. Dark hair was atypical in Gongaga, but he hadn't attributed much attention to pigmentation when he was more concerned about progression stats. Now he thought of it, there was so much of her in this one's face that he marvelled at not seeing it before. The boy had none of her reticence, though; smirking at his superior like he expected praise.

"You're going to get yourself killed fighting so irresponsibly," Angeal snapped, diminishing the smile but not eradicating it.

"Better me than the civilians I'm defending, sir."

Angeal looked at him then, looked hard at him, and thought back to Lazard's advice that he take on an apprentice to improve his interpersonal skills. He'd resisted thus far, not seeing enough in any of the recruits to invest more time in one more than the rest. This one wasn't extraordinary, but he was unique, and he didn't think like one of Shinra's yet.

Angeal stood tall over the kid and fixed him with a stare even Sephiroth respected. "We'll see."

Fin.