You weren't introduced. Just assigned.

No rank. A file with Gast's name stamped across the top, half-erased. A quiet note: "heals on contact." That was enough.

You followed behind them in silence. No armor. No weapon. Just a coat too large for your frame and the kind of stillness that didn't come from discipline.

You didn't belong on the field. But they brought you anyway.

You were Gast's child. A Cetra. Hidden from the world the moment he died. You grew up behind walls, alone. They left you in silence until your healing ability made you useful.

Then they started sending you into warzones. Not to fight.

To keep their best alive. Genesis. Angeal. Sephiroth.

That was your role. A silent shadow in their wake.

You didn't speak like them. Vocabulary limited. You flinched when voices rose. You didn't know how to sit beside a fire without looking unsure if you were allowed to.

Angeal was the first to try. He never pushed. Just offered food, softer tone, space. You never took the food. But you sat a little closer the next time.

Genesis stayed distant. But when you stopped his bleeding mid-combat, his usual sarcasm never came.

Sephiroth never spoke to you. But he watched.

Watched the way your hands hovered before touching wounds, unsure. The way you didn't look at people. The way you never reached out unless someone was falling apart.

Because maybe that's all you were ever taught to do. Fix damage. Then disappear.

You didn't know what comfort looked like. You didn't know what safety felt like. But you knew how to pull someone back from the edge. With your hands. Your gift. Your quiet presence.

And one night, when you passed out from overuse, your body shivering from the strain, you didn't wake up in medical quarters.

You were simply carried. By him. He said nothing. Just draped his coat over your shoulders and let you rest.

Genesis saw it. So did Angeal.

Neither of them said it aloud. But Sephiroth felt it settle between them.

This could have been him. Not the version they knew.

But the one Shinra might have made, if not for circumstance. Silence. Isolation. Hands trained only to serve. A life designed to support others, never live for itself.

You were what he might've been.

But that night, while the others slept, he checked your breathing once.

Then sat nearby. Not out of obligation. Out of something else.

Because for the first time, watching you sleep, blanket half-kicked off, curled loosely in his coat, he realized you hadn't just kept them alive.

You had reminded them what it meant to be.