The jagged peaks south of ruined Midgar had long been written off as a lifeless wasteland where the wind merely howled through fissures of cooled magma, scattering the ash of the Old War and the lingering, luminous dust of the Lifestream. Yet, you were drawn here by a pulse—a distorted, fluctuating rhythm that your instruments failed to register, but which tugged heavily at your instincts. Having survived Geostigma, you were no longer just a scientist; you had become attuned to the planet's fragile breath, and right now, it was calling to you.

You found him at the epicenter of a blasted crater: a man clad in dark leather armor, crowned with striking platinum hair, looking entirely too pristine for such a desolate world. As you cautiously reached out to check his pulse, his hand shot up, fingers locking around your wrist like a vice as his eyes snapped open.

"You're not Mother," he rasped, his gaze mapping the contours of your face as though searching for details slipping through his grasp. Without warning, he leaned in perilously close, his breath brushing your skin and freezing you in place. While a sudden flush warmed your cheeks, his expression remained perfectly blank, oblivious to the intimacy of the moment. Frowning through a haze of murky thoughts, he finally released you, pulling away with a whispered, "I don't know why I remember that... but you're not her."

That was how the fragile alliance began. As weeks bled into one another, you fell into a quiet rhythm on the road. You never pushed him for answers, and he never intruded on your space; he simply stayed. He became a silent guardian, shouldering the heavy supplies and walking ahead to clear treacherous paths, sleeping little and speaking even less.

When trouble found you, Loz fought with a terrifying, desperate grace, as if violence was the only language he truly understood. He was a blur of pale blue energy, moving faster than the wind to shatter ancient trees with his bare hands or slam into the earth, unleashing shockwaves that crackled with raw lightning. His weapon, the Dual Hound, sparked like a living, snarling beast—and only when the dust finally settled would he retreat back into his heavy silence.

Then the dreams started. You could see the fragments of memory haunting him: the phantom voices of his brothers, encroaching shadows, and the cold, alluring silhouette of a woman he couldn't quite grasp. He rarely spoke of these visions, but you learned to read them in the brooding way he stared into the campfire for hours on end.

Travel eventually forced you into abandoned waystations and rare safe havens where a single bed was a luxury. Out of necessity, the shared space became a quiet routine. Loz was a remarkably deep sleeper, and sometimes, lost to the unconscious dark, the boundaries between you blurred. You would wake up enveloped in his warmth, his strong arms draped securely over your waist or shoulders. Come morning, neither of you mentioned it; he always rose before you, either feigning ignorance or genuinely forgetting the nighttime embraces.

But tonight was different.

Sleep had long eluded you, leaving you hyper-aware of his steady breathing behind you and the familiar weight of his arm resting across your waist. Hoping not to disturb him, you tried to shift slightly, but his arm immediately tightened, pulling you back with a quiet, deliberate certainty. Moving carefully so as not to startle you, he closed the remaining distance. His solid chest pressed firmly against your back, and his breath ghosted warmly across the nape of your neck, thickening the silence in the room until it felt almost heavy.

"You don't like it?" he murmured, his voice a low, rough rasp in the dark.

When you couldn't find the breath to answer right away, his palm shifted just a fraction, resting gently against your stomach—a gesture that was fiercely protective, undeniably present, yet incredibly gentle.

"Lying like this?" he prompted again, softer this time.