365 Hours with Rufus Shinra (FFVII: Rufus x OC)

ch15.3 damn you, self, for giving up your fucking life, so easily

HANNAH HAD no idea what happened after this. She just knew she never pulled the trigger because something came emerging from the ground. It was a phosphorescent green glow that broke through the soil and stopped it all. She remembered stepping away from it. She couldn't know the consequences of having it touching her. But it looked like that green glow that escaped people's bodies when they die. It was the same colour as Mako. It must have been the Lifestream.

It stopped Meteor, but it destroyed Midgar. The weaker buildings collapsed. Hannah ran. She ran with all the strength that she had. And then there was smoke in the air. Dust and smoke from the buildings that had collapsed and it made it hard to breathe. Hannah coughed and fell to her knees.

She couldn't tell what had just happened, but Meteor was no longer in the air, and Midgar wasn't totally destroyed. The Lifestream disappeared no long after and then she wandered. She wandered through the empty streets of what was once Sector Three. It was all abandoned ruins. A few fires still flickered here and there. The sun had come out. The new day had dawned.

Hannah tried to pull it together. She didn't have her inhaler. She couldn't get an asthmatic shock. Not now. She drew in deep breaths and she tried to focus on breathing. She calmed down. She took a moment. Midgar was empty. Or so she thought.

She heard footsteps and then gunshots. Hannah rolled out of the way avoiding a bullet that came right at her. It crashed on a rubble of cement and metal that had been standing behind her. She landed on her one knee, the other, bent, propping her hand on top. Her lab-coat spread behind on the dark, cracked pavement.

Five armed men. They seemed wounded, but not too much. She wouldn't be surprised if they had lost their families after this. "You're a scientist of Shinra's, aren't you?"

Hannah raised an eyebrow before she realised, she still had that Shinra ID card pinned on her lab-coat. She looked at the gun with Shinra's sign carved on the metal. That gun still had only one bullet. She couldn't waste it. She settled the gun between her skirt and the small of her back before she lifted her hands in surrender and she approached the five men.

"I'm just a doctor. I am no threat," Hannah said but she could tell she wasn't convincing them.

"No, it's Shinra's scientists who have brought the world at the sorry state it's in," The other man said right before they attacked.

One held a gun. He fired at her but Hannah jumped out of the way. She kicked him hard in the gut and he coughed. The other tried to punch her. Hannah took a step back. She avoided another punch, bowing before she slipped behind him and punched him hard on his waist, breaking a few ribs. The man with the gun attacked again. He shot at her and Hannah rolled out of the way. The lab-coat was still making moving difficult.

She side-kicked the man's head, knocking him on the ground. Hannah grabbed the gun from his hand and she shot the other three that were rushing towards her. Hannah stared at the bodies as they collapsed on the pavement. She knew that the other two would stand up, and should they find her again, they would attack. She couldn't risk letting them live. She shot the one and she turned to shoot the other one only to find that he had been missing.

And then she felt something tearing through her back and exiting from her stomach. She looked down only to see the pointy side of the dagger. Hannah gasped as the pain instantly spread all over her stomach. The warm, slick blood slipped out, soaking her shirt and her white lab-coat.

Her hand gripped on the gun and she turned and shot the man who had stabbed her. No. She wasn't going to die. She still had a little bit of strength in her left. The gun slipped from hand and crashed on the pavement. Her legs felt weak, though. She tried to take a step forward and she rocked back. She let out a loud wince and her hand reached for the wound on her stomach. It radiated with pain. A gush of blood ran down her skirt and spilled on her shoes.