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When they meet again, he comes crashing down from the sky.
Cloud isn’t a calamity. He’s a man- just barely- with a sword too big for his hands and a heart too big for the cavity where it’s hidden.
After waking him up and seeing his eyes, Aerith is curious (they glow like the wound healed over in her chest). Some things are familiar; the way he looks at her, the way his uniform sits on his shoulders, the way her heart flits about like a butterfly. She finds herself wanting to know more.
Reno’s entrance leaves her mind reeling and not room for much else. An offer and a promise are all she can think of to keep Cloud close in the heat of the moment, though the way his pinks go cheek is a pleasant surprise. Reno’s never scared her before, not once, but the edge in his eyes has her make for the back room.
She stops for a moment when Cloud draws his sword. Reno is speed and snark, meeting Cloud with jabs, loud grit, and a manic fervor that has Aerith hesitating yet again. She isn’t sure why she does, as the metal and noise of it all will surely give her a headache, but she does. She closes her eyes to tune them out.
She finds that when she listens, the violence sounds almost like music.
The feeling lingers when they’re out of the church and from under Reno’s thumb. Despite being faced with Hedgehog Pies and various other critters, she feels safe and light and good. Spells take less from her than usual. She charges a blast with ease, finishing off a Wererat in one blow.
If flowers are pretty, he is beautiful. He moves like thunder and strikes like lightning. Oh, and when he laughs. She feels even lighter then. She holds her arms out parallel to the ground far below and wishes she could fly.
He isn’t like Zack, she realizes. If he were the same, her heart wouldn’t feel this way as she prodded and teased. He would look a different way and say something different. It would still hurt, knowing Zack would never come back and that Cloud wasn’t him.
This didn’t hurt. It felt right.
She knows this, feels it in her bones. Part of her argues otherwise. So little time has passed. And yet he calls out her name when Rude hits her with a sleep spell, an outstretched hand the last thing she sees before she collapses. She is still safe when she wakes. She lands the attack that has their opponent fall to his knee.
She knows he must feel the same. He lets her lead him between sectors and through Wall Market even after promising to leave her alone. She thinks she even sees him smile.
It’s nice. She decides that she doesn’t ever want to be lonely again.
While Aerith is rushing to the center of Sector 7, she thinks of her new friends to keep the loneliness away.
She thinks of Tifa’s laugh at Cloud fumbling with the train controls in the graveyard; the honesty of her smile. There’s Tifa in her pretty blue dress and Tifa by her side helping her to her feet when she stumbles. Tifa, who so easily takes the lead while they charge through Corneo’s mansion.
And sweet, kind Tifa has asked her to find Marlene.
(“Marlene is a little girl with short hair. She was wearing a pink dress today! Her smile melts you like butter and she’s probably scared… will you please find her and take her somewhere safe, Aerith?”
How can she say no?
“Of course.”)
Seventh Heaven is big and bold in the middle of the square. Maybe on another day she could’ve asked for a drink, taken a walk around the block with Tifa and Cloud and looked at the steel sky from another sector. Today is not that day.
Marlene made herself small in a corner underneath the bar, her knees held to her chest and eyes misty. It doesn’t take much coaxing to work one of her hands into Aerith’s and guide her out the back door. Then they run for the hills.
Aerith thinks desperately of a day when Tifa and Cloud and Marlene will all come over to her house for fun. Mom would make Marlene her favorite food and they would all have a picnic on the bridge over the water. Elmyra wouldn’t smile at Cloud, but she’d nod her acceptance.
Yes. She’ll think of that. She’ll never be alone again, not ever. She rounds the corner, readjusting her grip on Marlene and picking up her pace.
Then she stops short.
She isn’t sure which is louder: the whirring of the helicopter or the Planet telling her to run run run. She runs, ducking into the tunnel to Sector 5 where the helicopter can’t reach, and eases through the backstreets that will hide her from prying eyes. Marlene is burying her face into the crook of Aerith’s neck, whimpering out, “Are you okay Miss Aerith?”
“Yes,” Aerith lies. “I’m going to take you to meet my mom. She has a whole garden full of flowers where you can play until Tifa comes to pick you up. What’s your favorite food?”
Marlene sniffles. “Mac n’ cheese.”
“My mom will make you all the mac n’ cheese you want, okay?” Keeping her tone cheerful is easier than ever. This little girl deserves a helping of mac n’ cheese and then the world. Aerith will make sure she gets it.
“Aerith!” someone calls for her. She ignores them and dashes up the pipes and walkway to Elmyra's house. She ignores them. She’s almost there, almost home.
Her view of the waterfall is blocked by dark, looming colors, soldiers, and Tseng.
She sets Marlene to the ground, stepping in front of her and holding out a protective hand. She knows they won’t hurt her, but- but they might hurt-
Tseng’s eyes move down, and then back up to her again: assessing. They’re cold.
Tseng isn’t Aerith’s friend, not really. She knows he’d choose Shinra before her regardless of his feelings. This was his job. And yet, some part of her couldn’t help but hope. She wishes it could have been Reno or Rude. She knows nothing would have changed.
There are now infantrymen flanking her on both sides. “You led us on quite a chase,” Tseng says.
“Tseng.” He nods tersely. “What do you want?”
He steps to the side, one hand behind his back and the other gesturing to the aircraft. “I’m here to retrieve you.” And she knows, she knows, but prays it isn’t true. She prays that she’s hearing wrong, understanding wrong.
“If you let me-”
Tseng’s brows raise a touch. “You are not in a position to bargain.” His voice cuts across hers, and it stings, but pinpricks are nothing compared to the cannonballs and bombshells that Aerith is accustomed to. Spitting fire at her won’t hurt when an inferno burns inside her chest.
She breathes and starts again.
One step at a time.
“If you let me take this girl inside to my mother, then I will go with you.” There is no alternative presented. Aerith wouldn’t dare to take one. Even with the way his words whittle at her self worth, she will do it. She will do anything to protect this girl who Tifa loves.
Tseng smirks. He dips his head, satisfied.
She bends down next to Marlene, whose breathing is audible. “I’m going to take you to meet her now, okay?” Marlene nods. Aerith smiles at her and squeezes her hand. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“I want you to be okay.”
Aerith blinks. Her heart melts like Tifa said it would. Yes, she will do anything for this little girl. It will make Tifa happy. It will make Cloud happy.
Tseng walks her inside with a hand on her back.
Tseng stands over her, close enough to reach out and stop her if she makes a move. They aren’t flying to the Shinra building yet. “Where are we going?” There are so many other things she wants to ask. Why are you doing this? Will you let me see my friends? Are you really going to drop the plate?
Of course, she doesn’t.
“To pick up Reno and Rude from a job.” She isn’t given anything more than that.
As they approach the place she’d run from, she feels her heart sink to her stomach. Her staff is far out of reach, and she has no one to hold onto when faced with all of three Turks at once. Reno and Rude are a bit worse for wear, but still up enough to hold their own.
Before she can begin to make sense of it, Tseng forces her out to the rig on the side. There’s gunfire. Tseng’s hand is ice on her arm. “I wouldn’t try that,” he tsks, as if scolding a child. “You might injure our special guest.”
Aerith looks away, ashamed. She’s capable. She can protect herself and hold her own and fight. And yet here she is, being paraded in front of the very people she was protecting when she made her choice. It reminds her what she is to Shinra.
“Aerith!”
“So you know each other?” Tseng’s voice is as analytical as always, if not somewhat intrigued. “It doesn’t really matter. You won’t see her again.”
“What are you going to do with Aerith?” Cloud demands.
Aerith tears herself out of Tseng’s hold. He gives her an unreadable look. “If you must know, my orders were to capture and detain the last remaining Ancient. She’s evaded Shinra for long enough.”
(Liar, Aerith thinks bitterly. She never got away from them to begin with. The sky would have eaten her alive.)
She still has time. “Tifa!” She shouts, “Tifa, I did it! She’s alright, she’s-”
Tseng grabs her again, tighter this time, and hauls her close to him. “Not another word,” he warns, sharp. She never thought Tseng would hurt her before.
“Aerith!” Tifa is still calling her name, bracing herself to jump with a hardened glint in her eyes. “Aerith, hold on!”
“Run!” Aerith cries. “You have to go!”
Cloud says her name again. “Aerith!” The sound of his voice cuts like a knife through her chest. His conviction twists the blade.
“Where do you expect them to go?” Tseng chuckles, revelling in the victory, even if it isn’t his to claim.
(It’s too cruel. Is this even Tseng? Hadn’t he told her he’d wait for her compliance all those years ago? Of course, it was still cruel then, but even so.)
A boom stops Aerith’s heart. Tseng looks to the plate and nods to someone behind him, dangerously collected once more. Arms reach around her middle. They pull her back and into the body of the vehicle.
Once her mind catches up to her, Aerith starts again. She throws her full weight toward Cloud, Tifa, and the other man with them. “Hurry! You have to get out! You have to-” there’s another voice in her ear- Rude’s- but she blocks it out, blocks everything out until her voice is thrown back in her face as the door slides shut. The chopper changes courses.
No!
She spins, not surprised to see wavering expressions on both Rude and Reno’s faces. She has so many things she wants to ask. What did you do? How could you? What’s wrong with you?
No one speaks.
Then the planet screams.
Tseng’s stare lingers on her for longer than she’d deem appropriate, but Reno is the one who walks her up to Hojo’s lab. Aerith wishes there was something she could tell him. He must be thinking lots of things, only some of which she can tell from the scowl on his face. When he gestures ‘after you’ with his baton by the elevator to the lab, she swallows and goes on.
“Girl’s here, Prof,” Reno says. He won’t meet her gaze.
“Ah, wonderful! Wonderful.”
Aerith tries her best to tune Hojo out. She can never be far enough from him, never. Listening to him and looking at him both make her sick. When she sees Hojo she sees her mother with bruised arms and a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She sees art that’s made of crayons and paints and blood.
She’s forced to face him when he grabs her chin, angling it every which way to examine her with a clinical and yet fascinated leer. Her stomach twists, but she barely feels it beneath the overwhelming sensation of her boiling veins.
“I’m glad to see you unscathed, dear girl,” he smiles. She tastes bile. Hojo looks to one of the guards at her side and shoves a keycard their way. “Put her in the central containment cell. I’ll be less than a minute.” His weak fingers flex, wiry and calloused against her skin. His grin widens. “Sit tight.”
Her chest is tight and her eyes burn and now Reno looks at her. He’s steeled himself. She recoils as if struck, into the soldiers who pull her away to the fenced elevator. She almost laughs to herself.
Little songbird, back in her cage.
There’s a part of her that wants to rage. She wants to smash the insulated glass to bits until it falls at her feet and then run until she can’t breathe. She hates it, she hates Hojo and his lab and his oily voice.
She hums something to herself. A lullaby, maybe, from when her mother would hold her. She removes herself from this place and goes somewhere where the sun touches her but the sky cannot. She disappears into the river of her mind like a petal on the water.
When she sleeps, she sees flowers. She sees a garden. She feels the sun and she sees Cloud.
He hovers over her while she lies in her flowerbed. She giggles at him and the almost-smile he offers in return. He helps her to her feet and they walk. She thinks she hears Tifa’s laugh somewhere in the distance.
She looks away for just a moment. When she turns back, he is far. She is in the shade. His eyes shine, still pretty.
So familiar. So different.
She has to turn and walk away, but she knows he’ll walk this way too. His eyes told her so. When he does, he’ll find her.
Hojo is uncharacteristically mild.
That’s not to say Aerith feels safe. She will never feel safe being as close as she is to this man. But he is much more subdued than she recalls, and it unsettles her.
Some assistants run a few scans, all while not saying a word to her. She isn’t entirely sure what they’re doing. This isn’t new. Hojo didn’t tell her much as a girl, but she was just that: a girl. They take urine and blood samples and have her shower, and still Hojo hasn’t touched her once.
She surmises it’s been at least a full day. Aerith sits on the lone chair in her cell. She wants to pace, but she refuses to give Hojo that satisfaction. He’s bent over a table close to her, scribbling, mumbling things she can’t make out. She needs to know. She doesn’t want to.
She almost wishes he would speak, horrible as it is. No one will talk to her.
She stiffens when Hojo approaches the glass. His complete silence tells her his mind is still elsewhere. He traces the glass, fingers dragging over what Aerith imagines is her as he sees her. She fixes her eyes on her lap and fiddles with her shaking hands.
“Aerith, Aerith, Aerith…” His voice disgusts her. “As exquisite as her mother.” The hair on the back of Aerith’s neck stands. Hojo opens his mouth as if to say more, but then smiles, chortling to himself. “I have a meeting to attend. Be patient.”
Her temple pulses.
She hates him.
No. She thinks of her mother’s soft palms and hair. She retreats back to her flower field and closes her eyes.
(Elmyra’s worry lines have faded. She is helping Aerith weed the flowers, at peace. She hears Tifa down the road, with a voice unfamiliar to her and then a laugh that must be Marlene’s. She’s with the children from the sector, laughing and twirling. Aerith sees this all without looking.
“Aerith?” someone says. “Aerith?”)
“Aerith!”
Aerith’s head snaps up. She rushes over to the edge of the cell, flattening her hands against it. “Cloud! Tifa!”
There’s another man, the one who’d been at the pillar and at Elmyra’s house in her dreams. He has a gun for an arm and it’s focused squarely on Hojo, who looks inconvenienced. “Filthy,” Hojo scowls. “Are you really so accustomed to violence?” His complaint is met with a prod to the shoulder.
Tifa runs to Aerith, placing her own hands against what keeps them from Aerith’s and looking the glass up and down. She pounds at it with her fist.
Aerith looks to Cloud. His brows are flat and his eyes are angry. He moves quickly to stand beside Tifa, pressing gloved fingers against the walls and the control panel. “Barret.”
The newly named Barret straightens his elbow. “Get the door open.”
“You know, the equipment in here is very delicate,” Hojo goes on. “I’d say you need me to operate it.”
Barret scoffs. “Fuck it. Get back, y’all.” He jabs Hojo in the chest, quickly changing targets. Cloud and Tifa dart a safe distance away while Aerith hugs the wall. She presses her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut.
The planet is but a dull murmur from atop this metal tower.
“Aerith!” Tifa pulls her out before a bright light flashes and the glass falls to the floor. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” She looks around, dazed but grateful. “So you did come.”
“We did.”
Her heart is loud in her ears. There are voices and a creature who Hojo’s labeled Red XIII. Red, like tulips and roses and affection. And not blood. It’s nice. Tifa presses Aerith’s staff back into her hands, worriedly closing her fingers around it when she doesn’t respond.
They came.
“Thank you,” Aerith says.
Cloud stops. He looks at her and nods. She remembers the flower field for a moment. She thinks about the inherent beauty of being surrounded by goodness. She feels the Lifestream underfoot.
“Come on. You, me, and Tifa will go to the 66th floor elevator together. We’ll rendezvous with Barret and Red there.”
She feels the urge to take his hand.
It still sounds like music.
Aerith, Cloud, and Tifa are ambushed in the elevator by Rude and Tseng. Before she can make the move to draw her staff, Tifa shifts into a fighting stance and Cloud draws his sword. She can feel fire and heat radiating off of them and a hurricane circles them like a shield. If Zack made her feel safe, they make her feel strong.
(She still wonders if Zack was in pain when he left. She wonders if this was the Lifestream’s way of bringing him back to her.
It doesn’t matter. She cares for Cloud.)
She can’t bring herself to feel daunted, even when they’re subdued and she’s taken away. Tseng actually cuffs her this time. He leads her along with a hand on her, as if he thinks she’ll disappear into thin air. He bends down and mutters that it’s in her best interest to cooperate.
She still isn’t scared upon seeing President Shinra’s greedy eyes. She doesn’t flinch as a puff of smoke from his cigarette wafts her way. “Your mother may have slipped through our fingers, girl, but I assure you that you will not.”
The words run off of her like raindrops.
“Cloud,” Aerith says later, as close to him as she can get. “I knew you’d come.”
“Hey, I’m your bodyguard, right?” Though the sound is muffled, she can hear bits of his humor through the wall. Her heart drums. It’s a smile in its own right.
She cups her fist like in prayer. He’s so sweet, even if he won’t admit it.
She thinks back to her time in the church with him. There’s something about Cloud that puzzles her. After spending longer with him, she thinks sometimes he does remind her of Zack, albeit in superficial ways. Some of his gestures, the confidence, and of course the Buster Sword. Maybe she was a little desperate to justify how she came to care for him so quickly and how much it scared her. Her initial instincts still rang true, though. He wasn't Zack. Aerith senses something inside of him. A bit of cluelessness. Wit, reliability, and something entirely an enigma to her.
It still felt right.
He’s different. Things are different now. She cares for him, and one day she’ll tell him this.
Her heart beats in her chest, steady now. “The deal was for one date, wasn’t it?”
“Oh.”
Aerith blinks. “Tifa? Tifa, you’re there too? Are you alright?”
It’s quiet for a little. She feels her stomach twist.
“Aerith,” Tifa says slowly, “I have a question.”
The mood picks itself up again. Aerith relays as much as she knows about herself, her people, and the Promised Land. She really doesn’t know much, other than what her mother had told her. One day she will find supreme happiness in her Promised Land.
She also knows now that her place of supreme happiness will not be lonely.
She sleeps. When she wakes, Tifa is shaking her. Much has changed. Aerith sees many things.
Sephiroth’s sword buried in the president’s chest. An extension of Jenova, a monster. The ruthless and cruel nature of Rufus Shinra. Cloud atop a motorcycle. Tifa’s beckoning hand. Barret and Red holding on for dear life as a window breaks behind them.
The edge of Midgar.
“I have things I want to learn. Many things,” she tells Cloud.
The sky is big, bigger than anything Aerith has ever seen before. She remembers telling Zack how she feared it. Truth be told, it still intimidates her. It’s big and blue. It might steal more away from her.
The world is so big.
“This is the first time I’ve ever left Midgar,” she then says.
“You worried?”
“A little.” She pauses. She tells him the truth. “No. A lot. But I have my bodyguard, don’t I?” It’s barely a question. She knows this, feels it in her bones.
Cloud gives her a small smile. She keeps her eyes on his back all the way to Kalm.
Show the way.