She is putting away the latest letter from Angeal, the news of the war going to end and how he'll recommend his favorite student for advancement, when there's the first distant scream.
Gillian's first thought is monsters - they're not close enough to Wutai to be targeted, and a town full of simple apple orchards wouldn't mean much anyway. The first aid kit is in a small shoulder bag that she always keeps near the door, because these things do happen in remote little farming communities in Banora. But before she has even stepped out the door, there's the smell of flesh burning, and she realizes that this is nothing like any monster attack she has lived through before.
Still, she steps through the door.
It was a long time ago that she last feared death. Just as long that she started to long for it, too.
At this time of day, most of the town is out in the fields, or working in the factory - hard at work, in other words. Just a guard or two that lazes around the square, until someone tries something stupid, or there's reason enough to raise the alarm. It was Carn, today, she thinks.
It's Carn's body there, already half-ash where it burns there on ground that is more dirt than tile.
In the ShinRa labs, one gains an iron stomach with what they may witness. A burnt corpse is not enough to disturb her, not on its own, not as a physical sight. But the person she sees standing over it? That familiar burn of red hair?
What that single pitch wing stretched out in the air means?
She feels sick, dizzy with the force of it, and there is, for one moment that feels like it has stretched out through the entirety of her life, a keen of despair. It is both eternal, and it is brief.
And then she settles into a numb calm.
Genesis is already turning to face her, no doubt having heard her footsteps a mile away, and yet his eyes widen, seeing her stand there. Perhaps he hadn't expected her to arrive so soon. Still, there can only really be one reason why he's here, can't there?
The bag lands neatly on the floor; there's no saving Carn, ShinRa bug she always suspected him to be, and there will be no saving her, either.
"Gillian," Genesis starts to say, but then she closes her eyes, folds her hands neatly in front of her dress. For over a neat twenty years, she had lived a more peaceful life than she had ever deserved. She had gotten away with the greatest crime of the decade, hurt children who had done nothing but be conceived, and then run away like the world's grandest coward so that she could live a quiet little life out in the countryside. Even if she had raised a child, raised two, with all the kindness and love she could give... How would that ever make up for all she had done?
This was always going to come back to her.
If it comes back in flame, then the pain is nothing less than what she has deserved. If it is blade, then perhaps it will be quick.
It comes back in neither of those things.
The fire is dying down, and what comes back to her ears instead is the catch of a breath that is so very loud in this empty little town square. "Miss Hewley," Genesis says, voice strangled tight until it almost sounds like a child again. A child, holding the hand of her own, there in the doorway of her home. "No - I only - No. Not you." Then, before she can open her eyes again, the sound of heavy wing beats goes through the air, and she ducks her head at the gust which whips up dust against her face.
The sight that greets her, when it all settles, is nothing but an empty square, a single charred corpse, and, gently floating through the air, pitch black feathers.
She stares. Even she does not know her own emotions until they bubble up through her throat, tear out a sob, and she is crying, then. She cries so hard that it feels as though she may fall apart then and there where she sinks down onto the dirt, face in her hands.
What was she doing? What was she daring to ask of him?
She nearly made a child kill her.
She has never once stopped being a monster.
Gillian cries less than she feels a true woman, a human with red blood, truly would, and the sky does not feel as though it has changed at all when she lowers her hands at long last. Some meters away, the corpse still lays there.
Aches shoot sharply up her legs when she pushes herself up to her feet. Perhaps it is adrenaline, perhaps it is something else, but she thinks she hears the sound of stomping boots off on the outskirts of town. Leaning down, she takes her bag in hand, and goes back home.
What else can she do for now but go back home?
The figures she sees out her windows there are dressed in ShinRa equipment, but she can tell from a glance that they are not them. None of them attempt to enter her house, although she can hear doors being forced open in her neighbors' homes. In the pit of her stomach, she has a suspicion of what is happening.
But all she does is move through her home, silently preparing for whatever guests may come. If Genesis is here, then she is certain that her boy is not far behind. Angeal could never leave him behind, and never did, always following after even though he were the one with longer legs. Can she bear to face him? With what he might know now, with what Genesis surely knows with the evidence of that single black wing?
Gillian doesn't feel as though she could. The very idea tightens around her throat, until her lungs might burst.
So she gathers things. She prepares some simple little fried potatos in a bowl, the thing her child always ate whenever he merely needed something to occupy his mouth. For Angeal, if he can even bear to look at her, set out on the kitchen counter.
When he'd first become old enough, she'd gotten a bottle from a top cabinet, poured him a cup of apple wine when he'd nearly been vibrating with excitement. They'd laughed together over the table, her and Angeal and Genesis. She'd poured it for him again, the night before he was to set out for SOLDIER, and they'd been quieter, then, up until he'd cupped his hands around hers and promised he'd be safe.
It'd never been his safety, exactly, that had made her fall apart in grief. She never explained that to him.
She gets that bottle from the top cabinet yet again, and something else, too. A small little box, something that could almost be a compact mirror in its shape, or something to hold playing cards. She'd kept Angeal away from it for years, even when he'd grown taller than her by meters, just by saying it was something for a woman.
And it is something for a woman. It is for her, and always has been, just in case. A single pill, a concoction she knows will dissolve and spread so very quickly. Easily. She knows, because she made it herself.
The wine, in its bottle. The pill, in its box. She puts them on the table, for herself.
It has been... too long, she thinks.
There is just one last thing she needs get. It's a shovel that's long not seen any use, the metal in its spade bent so bad in places that it might be hard pressed to go digging properly again. Angeal never did have any worry in him when it came to rushing out, chasing off a stray monster snapping its jaws around the orchards, but she worried, really, on him for it even if she always knew that he'd never be in real danger. It took long, so long, for her to save up for a proper weapon along with her deceased husband, at least something that could withstand Angeal's strength.
Until then, they'd got him a shovel with sturdy enough metal in it, and it survived a few whacks, at the very least.
It takes up two chairs besides her at the table, stretched across the length of both.
For Hollander.
Should he think he can still "talk sense" into her.
Gillian straightens her skirts out, seated where she is, and listens to the world outside her home. There is nothing, now. No crackling fire. No boots, stomping against dirt. There is only her own breathing, and, before her, wine and a pill.
Professor Gillian Hewley closes her eyes, and she waits for what may come, and she waits for the end.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suicidal ideation cw
Gillian's first thought is monsters - they're not close enough to Wutai to be targeted, and a town full of simple apple orchards wouldn't mean much anyway. The first aid kit is in a small shoulder bag that she always keeps near the door, because these things do happen in remote little farming communities in Banora. But before she has even stepped out the door, there's the smell of flesh burning, and she realizes that this is nothing like any monster attack she has lived through before.
Still, she steps through the door.
It was a long time ago that she last feared death. Just as long that she started to long for it, too.
At this time of day, most of the town is out in the fields, or working in the factory - hard at work, in other words. Just a guard or two that lazes around the square, until someone tries something stupid, or there's reason enough to raise the alarm. It was Carn, today, she thinks.
It's Carn's body there, already half-ash where it burns there on ground that is more dirt than tile.
In the ShinRa labs, one gains an iron stomach with what they may witness. A burnt corpse is not enough to disturb her, not on its own, not as a physical sight. But the person she sees standing over it? That familiar burn of red hair?
What that single pitch wing stretched out in the air means?
She feels sick, dizzy with the force of it, and there is, for one moment that feels like it has stretched out through the entirety of her life, a keen of despair. It is both eternal, and it is brief.
And then she settles into a numb calm.
Genesis is already turning to face her, no doubt having heard her footsteps a mile away, and yet his eyes widen, seeing her stand there. Perhaps he hadn't expected her to arrive so soon. Still, there can only really be one reason why he's here, can't there?
The bag lands neatly on the floor; there's no saving Carn, ShinRa bug she always suspected him to be, and there will be no saving her, either.
"Gillian," Genesis starts to say, but then she closes her eyes, folds her hands neatly in front of her dress. For over a neat twenty years, she had lived a more peaceful life than she had ever deserved. She had gotten away with the greatest crime of the decade, hurt children who had done nothing but be conceived, and then run away like the world's grandest coward so that she could live a quiet little life out in the countryside. Even if she had raised a child, raised two, with all the kindness and love she could give... How would that ever make up for all she had done?
This was always going to come back to her.
If it comes back in flame, then the pain is nothing less than what she has deserved. If it is blade, then perhaps it will be quick.
It comes back in neither of those things.
The fire is dying down, and what comes back to her ears instead is the catch of a breath that is so very loud in this empty little town square. "Miss Hewley," Genesis says, voice strangled tight until it almost sounds like a child again. A child, holding the hand of her own, there in the doorway of her home. "No - I only - No. Not you." Then, before she can open her eyes again, the sound of heavy wing beats goes through the air, and she ducks her head at the gust which whips up dust against her face.
The sight that greets her, when it all settles, is nothing but an empty square, a single charred corpse, and, gently floating through the air, pitch black feathers.
She stares. Even she does not know her own emotions until they bubble up through her throat, tear out a sob, and she is crying, then. She cries so hard that it feels as though she may fall apart then and there where she sinks down onto the dirt, face in her hands.
What was she doing? What was she daring to ask of him?
She nearly made a child kill her.
She has never once stopped being a monster.
Gillian cries less than she feels a true woman, a human with red blood, truly would, and the sky does not feel as though it has changed at all when she lowers her hands at long last. Some meters away, the corpse still lays there.
Aches shoot sharply up her legs when she pushes herself up to her feet. Perhaps it is adrenaline, perhaps it is something else, but she thinks she hears the sound of stomping boots off on the outskirts of town. Leaning down, she takes her bag in hand, and goes back home.
What else can she do for now but go back home?
The figures she sees out her windows there are dressed in ShinRa equipment, but she can tell from a glance that they are not them. None of them attempt to enter her house, although she can hear doors being forced open in her neighbors' homes. In the pit of her stomach, she has a suspicion of what is happening.
But all she does is move through her home, silently preparing for whatever guests may come. If Genesis is here, then she is certain that her boy is not far behind. Angeal could never leave him behind, and never did, always following after even though he were the one with longer legs. Can she bear to face him? With what he might know now, with what Genesis surely knows with the evidence of that single black wing?
Gillian doesn't feel as though she could. The very idea tightens around her throat, until her lungs might burst.
So she gathers things. She prepares some simple little fried potatos in a bowl, the thing her child always ate whenever he merely needed something to occupy his mouth. For Angeal, if he can even bear to look at her, set out on the kitchen counter.
When he'd first become old enough, she'd gotten a bottle from a top cabinet, poured him a cup of apple wine when he'd nearly been vibrating with excitement. They'd laughed together over the table, her and Angeal and Genesis. She'd poured it for him again, the night before he was to set out for SOLDIER, and they'd been quieter, then, up until he'd cupped his hands around hers and promised he'd be safe.
It'd never been his safety, exactly, that had made her fall apart in grief. She never explained that to him.
She gets that bottle from the top cabinet yet again, and something else, too. A small little box, something that could almost be a compact mirror in its shape, or something to hold playing cards. She'd kept Angeal away from it for years, even when he'd grown taller than her by meters, just by saying it was something for a woman.
And it is something for a woman. It is for her, and always has been, just in case. A single pill, a concoction she knows will dissolve and spread so very quickly. Easily. She knows, because she made it herself.
The wine, in its bottle. The pill, in its box. She puts them on the table, for herself.
It has been... too long, she thinks.
There is just one last thing she needs get. It's a shovel that's long not seen any use, the metal in its spade bent so bad in places that it might be hard pressed to go digging properly again. Angeal never did have any worry in him when it came to rushing out, chasing off a stray monster snapping its jaws around the orchards, but she worried, really, on him for it even if she always knew that he'd never be in real danger. It took long, so long, for her to save up for a proper weapon along with her deceased husband, at least something that could withstand Angeal's strength.
Until then, they'd got him a shovel with sturdy enough metal in it, and it survived a few whacks, at the very least.
It takes up two chairs besides her at the table, stretched across the length of both.
For Hollander.
Should he think he can still "talk sense" into her.
Gillian straightens her skirts out, seated where she is, and listens to the world outside her home. There is nothing, now. No crackling fire. No boots, stomping against dirt. There is only her own breathing, and, before her, wine and a pill.
Professor Gillian Hewley closes her eyes, and she waits for what may come, and she waits for the end.