AN: Due to the fact that this story focuses more on the relationship between Zack and Aerith than Crisis Core as a whole did, I've made a few changes to their scenes together and rearranged parts of the game's timeline in regards to the two characters. When I really got into writing it, I realized that their meeting and getting to know each other happened pretty quickly, so I wanted to slow it down a little in order to flesh out the early stages of their relationship better. I also wanted to put more of a focus on Aerith's Ancient heritage, since it was never really addressed in detail within any of the games within the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (as far as I remember) and goes largely unexplored in most of the fanfictions I've read, so I ended up taking a few liberties regarding her communication with the planet. For those reasons, this story is technically a slight AU. However, I'm not planning to make any large changes to the canon storyline or the overall dynamic between Zack and Aerith. All the tweaks I've made are to put more of a focus on the development of their personalities and relationship... and basically add lots of fluff over the course of the story. XD
Any and all feedback is highly appreciated, positive or negative, as long as it's polite. Reviews really make my day and make all the challenges of writing (like re-watching cutscenes from Crisis Core about a million times to accurately transcribe dialogue, interpret tone, and describe expressions, etc.) worth it. Thanks in advance for your support!
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy the first chapter!
In her whole life, Aerith had never picked a flower.
She admired their springy leaves and bright petals, loved hearing their welcoming whispers whenever she arrived at the church, and liked to bring home as many as she had room for. But whenever she took flowers from the church, she carefully dug them up and transplanted them into pots, unwilling to snap their roots or break their stems, to hear the whispering of the planet slowly growing fainter and fainter until the flower withered and died and its voice was silenced forever.
She had a faint memory of a time before she lived in Midgar, passing through a park with her mother. As they'd hurried by, Aerith had paused for a moment to watch the other children her age, to see what people did when they didn't have to run away or hide all the time. She remembered seeing the children pick dandelions and blow away their seeds in what they saw as harmless fun. She remembered tears welling in her eyes as she felt the flowers' stems being torn carelessly from their roots, remembered Ifalna telling her not to wince, to act as if she didn't share the planet's pain.
"I know it hurts," her mother had whispered, squeezing Aerith's hand. "I feel it too. But no one else does and you can't let them see that you do."
From then on, Aerith hadn't spoken a word to anyone about her connection to the planet, not even her adopted mother, Elmyra. Elmyra could tell that something about Aerith was different, but she never asked about it and Aerith never explained. It would feel wrong to speak of something Ifalna had always warned her to never reveal, even to someone she entrusted with everything else.
But knowing that her mother was dead and that she was the last Ancient left in the world, a secret she could never share, made her feel very alone.
Elmyra never said a word about the flowers Aerith brought home, the way they survived, even thrived, under her daughter's care after she had spent years trying and failing to grow them herself. She only smiled at Aerith's hopeful expression as she came home with a smudge of dirt on her cheek and a flowerpot cradled in her arms, and went to go find room for another plant somewhere in their house.
Aerith knew they were running out of space, but she liked the steady murmuring of the flowers in the church and wanted to recreate the clarity of their voices in her own home. Maybe one more plant would strengthen the words that were too faint for her to hear anywhere besides the church.
She always hesitated to come home in the evenings. But she knew that traveling the city streets at night was dangerous, and so she forced herself to return before dark. Maybe if she filled her house with enough flowers to recreate the constant whispering that calmed her at the church, she would at last find some contentment at home instead of only the lingering restlessness which sent her wandering back to the church every day for hours at a time.
She didn't expect to find anything unusual today when she went to the church to pick just one more flower to bring home (deciding firmly for about the third time that this plant would be the last), but when she walked through the doors, she noticed the difference immediately.
Instead of gently welcoming her, the flowers were humming with curiosity. The conflicting feelings of the flowers' interest and the pins-and-needles caused by plants being crushed attracted Aerith's gaze to the center of the flowerbed. There, she saw the shape of a person slumped on the ground, seemingly unconscious.
The flowers around him had been flattened, and Aerith could immediately tell that the person lying there had fallen on top of them from a great height. But where could he possibly have fallen from? The ceiling wasn't far enough for him to have hit the ground as hard as the crushed flowers indicated he had.
She looked up and felt her heart constrict in her chest as her gaze fell on a hole in the roof, through which she could see a patch of the sky. Just looking at the expanse of blue nothingness made Aerith freeze in place, her heart hammering in her chest. She curled her toes in a vain attempt to grip the ground more firmly; she couldn't help but feel as if gravity would suddenly give out and she would plunge into that emptiness, where she would keep falling and falling endlessly.
She didn't know how long she stood there, paralyzed with terror, but it was the flowers' murmuring that finally pulled her attention away from the sky.
Look over here, they seemed to prompt her, their collective mind buzzing around the person in the flowerbed. This boy is the one who's going to change your life.
"He doesn't look like a boy," Aerith murmured, studying his muscular arms and the sword strapped to his back dubiously. "He looks like a man." Still, as she crouched beside him, searching for injuries, she saw that his face held more youthful stillness than she had expected to find. At closer inspection, he looked about her age.
She wanted to do something to help him, but it was hard to think past the tingling feeling of crushed plants. She would have to move him before doing anything else.
Aerith did her best not to drag him, but the boy was heavy and unresponsive to her touch. Still, she managed to roll him onto the tile flooring of the church so that he wasn't squashing the plants anymore. Once that task was complete, Aerith shook the pins-and-needles sensation out of her fingers and stepped back to think.
Where did he come from? she wondered. And how did he end up here?
Apart from a few scratches, he looked completely uninjured. He must be pretty lucky... or the planet must have protected him from any severe damage.
Based on the rather large fuss that the flowers were making over him, the latter idea didn't seem too far-fetched.
Aerith was startled out of her contemplation by a soft groan from the unconscious boy, who was starting to stir a little. His brows furrowed in what seemed to be a worried expression. Maybe he's going to wake up soon, she thought hopefully.
"Mom?" he murmured in his sleep, making Aerith jump. "I... I want to help out a friend. But, I don't know how I can do it..."
"Hell-llooo?" she called experimentally, in a deliberately light and friendly voice. He looked distressed, and she didn't want to startle him.
"Mom?" he asked again, but he sounded uncertain now, closer to waking.
"Hell-lllo!" Aerith called again.
The boy's eyelids slid open, revealing blue eyes a more brilliant shade than she'd ever seen before. Aerith studied them thoughtfully for a long moment before realizing that the stranger's gaze had focused on the ceiling. He seemed a bit confused, probably wondering where he was, but at least he was awake now.
"Hooray!" she exclaimed, and his eyes darted to her face. He still looked a little dazed, as if he was trying to figure out how he had survived his fall.
"Heaven?" he asked at last, and she couldn't help but smile.
"Not quite," she told him, shaking her head. "Church in the slums."
He sat up, and they looked at each other curiously for a moment before he asked, "An angel...?" His eyes were wide as if he was serious, but Aerith had been flirted with before and was fairly sure this was his way of saying she was pretty.
She shook her head again, amused. "No. I'm Aerith!"
He tilted his head to one side thoughtfully, but she didn't wait for him to respond. Turning around, she pointed in the general direction of the hole he'd made in the roof without directly looking at it, keeping her eyes averted from the frightening blueness. "It seems you fell from the sky—gave me quite the scare when I found you here."
"So you saved me, huh?" he said thoughtfully. Aerith had assumed he would be like the other boys who had flirted with her—playful, careless—and the pensive look in his blue eyes took her by surprise. Giving him a more appraising look, she took note of his ruffled black hair and the almond shape of his blue eyes.
"Not really..." she said, turning around and ducking her head so that he wouldn't see her blush. Now that she'd really noticed his features, it was impossible to ignore how strikingly handsome he was. "'Hell-looo!' That's all I did."
Aerith turned to face the mysterious boy again, just in time to see him roll back on his shoulders and then spring to his feet. She couldn't help but laugh a little. How is he so full of energy even after a fall like that?
He glanced at her as he straightened up, seeming pleased by her amusement, and then turned to face her. Now that he was standing, Aerith could see that while he was much taller than her, her earlier assessment that he was about her age seemed to have been accurate. His long black bangs framed an innocent-looking face.
"Thank you so much, Aerith," the boy said sincerely. "I'm Zack."
She glanced down at her feet, feeling a little embarrassed by his gratitude—she hadn't done anything, really—but managed a faint smile.
Zack folded his arms across his chest, narrowing his eyes in a thoughtful look. "I have to repay you somehow."
Aerith hurriedly shook her head. "Don't worry about it!"
"No, no..." he said, and there was definitely a hint of playfulness in his voice now as he turned and paced a few steps away. "Hey, how about one date?" He flashed a grin that made it impossible for her to tell whether or not he was joking.
"What is that?" she protested. "Don't be silly!"
Feeling somewhat flustered, she turned away and gazed out across the flowerbed. The plants still seemed excited by Zack's presence. She wasn't sure if it was their energy humming through her that was making her heart beat faster than usual, or if she really was developing a crush on Zack alarmingly quickly. Sometimes, being an Ancient made it difficult to tell which feelings were actually hers and which were the planet's.
Zack's boots shifted, making the old floorboards groan a little, and Aerith turned just in time to see him step toward the flowerbed.
"Stop!" she cried. "Don't step on the flowers!" She was too far away to physically haul him away from them like she wanted to. All she could do was flinch, waiting for the painful sensation of the plants being stepped on, but it didn't come.
Zack had paused without setting his foot down on top of the delicate blossoms, and was giving her a quizzical look as he stepped back onto the floor. "Excuse me?"
"Normally, people are more careful with flowers," she told him. The slight edge in her voice came from both annoyance with him and annoyance with herself—for being so obvious about her connection with the Planet. If he'd suspected she was an Ancient, he would know it for certain now, after seeing her flinch like that.
Thankfully, he didn't seem to find her behavior peculiar, and even had the grace to look ashamed. "Well... I guess I'm not normal."
Was it bad that she found that statement relieving? Aerith always worried that she tried too hard to find someone who was like her—well, at least someone who felt the way she did. There was no one truly like her left in the world.
But Zack's describing himself as "not normal" made her feel a little less alone.
Zack's gaze dropped thoughtfully to the flowers, and he seemed to truly notice them for the first time. "You don't see a lot of flowers in Midgar," he remarked, seeming impressed. "They're like luxury items around here."
"They only grow here," Aerith told him, a hint of pride in her voice. "Although I planted some outside my house too." And inside. And basically everywhere.
"If I were you, I'd sell them," Zack said, walking off again, as if he didn't like being still for more than a few moments at a time. His voice took on a gently teasing tone. "Midgar's full of flowers, your wallet's full of money!"
"Midgar full of flowers... wallet full of money...?" she echoed. The idea sounded appealing, but it felt a bit dishonest. She'd always thought of the flowers as her friends, not as items to sell. But now that Zack had given her the idea, she really did want to see them bring color and happiness to the rest of Midgar...
What do you think? she asked the planet, being careful not to voice the question out loud like she normally would. She didn't want Zack to realize what she was. All of the flowers seemed to trust him, but Aerith knew what could happen if anyone figured out about her Ancient heritage.
She listened intently to the flowers' response. They didn't speak in words, so it was sometimes hard to translate exactly what they were saying. However, they certainly didn't seem offended by the idea.
She looked up and smiled at Zack. "Never thought of it that way."
He smiled back, and she felt her heart flutter in her chest. Yes, she was definitely starting to have a crush on him. There was no use denying it.
Zack walked off to look at the rest of the church with curious blue eyes. Aerith followed him with her gaze for a while before remembering that it was rude to stare and that she was there to take home a flower, not to gawk at a mysterious boy who she knew nothing about and commit his face to memory... however handsome said boy was.
She kneeled next to the flowerbed, scanning the sea of plants for one that stood a considerable distance from the others so that she wouldn't accidentally disturb the roots of any others when digging it up. As she picked one and started to carefully dig at the soil around it with gentle fingertips, she found it impossible to concentrate when the flowers were still insisting that Zack was the most important thing in the room, that she should still be paying attention to that boy right over there.
She glanced furtively over her shoulder and saw that Zack was still there, looking at the windows with his back to her. No, she told the flowers as firmly as she could. I'll probably never see him again after this anyway.
They hummed loudly in protest.
"Can you stop that?" she snapped at them under her breath.
"Huh?" said Zack, and she turned around to see that he was giving her a curious, slightly puzzled look. "Did you say something?"
"Um, just talking to myself," she lied, turning back to the flowers and brushing her bangs forward to hide her face. She'd thought she had been quiet enough to prevent him from overhearing. Zack must have extremely keen senses.
"Oh." He sounded intrigued and a bit confused. But he couldn't have heard what she was saying, could he? He was standing all the way across the church, and there had never been much of an echo even before he'd punched a large hole in the roof. No one's hearing could be that good.
Now look what you've done, she scolded the flowers, but they didn't seem to be concerned. Apparently, even if Zack thought she was weird, the planet was confident that he wouldn't mention it to anyone who would be more suspicious about it than he was. Aerith couldn't help but worry, but she also trusted that the planet would know Zack and his intentions better than she did.
She went back to digging, and was carefully lifting the plant she had chosen out of the ground when the flowers' murmuring spiked into sudden intensity. Aerith hurriedly put her plant into the pot she had brought and looked up to see that Zack had made his way to the doorway and seemed to be leaving.
Will he be back? she asked the planet hopefully, but its answer seemed to depend on what happened in the next few moments.
Zack turned around and surveyed the church thoughtfully before addressing her with a question. "So, are you always here?" She wasn't sure if she imagined it, but there seemed to be a hopeful note in his voice which matched the one in her heartbeat.
"Yeah," she said. It was basically true. She didn't like being in the house alone when Elmyra was out working, and left whenever she could. Aerith hated solitude; the house was far too quiet without her mother, and silence made her feel vulnerable. At least in the church, she had the flowers to talk to, and they spoke back in their own way, even if no other people ever came... before today.
"Hey," she said to Zack, standing up, "so where are you going?"
"Hmm," he replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm not really sure..."
Aerith walked over to him, wanting to be closer to him, not wanting him to leave so quickly. She gazed into his blue eyes again. They looked fascinating, almost as if they were glowing. Everything about Zack was fascinating. Wherever he was going now, she wanted to go with him, at least for a little while. "I'll take you there, okay?"
"...Where?" He shrugged, shifting his stance and shrinking the gap between the two of them a little. There were still a few feet between them, but Aerith could tell that her need to be closer seemed reciprocated.
Why does it feel like we're so connected? Aerith wondered, not sure whether to feel excited or frustrated. In truth, I know nothing about this boy but his name.
That wasn't entirely true. She knew that he was thoughtful yet playful and that he liked her, at least a little. And she knew that her flowerbed, the part of the planet she was familiar with and trusted, considered him important and believed that he would somehow change her life. Those small bits of knowledge still weren't much, but they definitely counted for something.
She was startled from her thoughts by the realization that Zack was still waiting for an answer, though he looked content enough to gaze at her thoughtfully.
"Hmm, I'm not really sure..." she said, closing her eyes and trying to think of the best place to take him. Zack must have fallen from above the plate... What was the best way to get him back to the upper levels of Midgar?
"You just want to spend more time with me, right?" Zack asked, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that he was grinning at her.
Not really thinking about it, she nodded. "Yeah."
"Whoa!" Zack looked startled, and Aerith blushed as she realized that he must have been joking. Interpreting tone of voice didn't come naturally to her, and though she'd learned over the years how to tell when people were joking, humor still sometimes flew over her head when she wasn't paying attention. She was a complete social failure, especially with the constant murmuring of the flowers distracting her.
"Are you... Did you...?" He trailed off before he could finish either question, studying her with a kind of renewed curiosity, as if just by looking at her, he was trying to figure out who she was on the inside, the part of her she tried her best to keep hidden. Looking into those brilliant blue eyes of his, a part of her didn't doubt he could.
"Come on," Aerith interrupted, hurrying past him through the doorway, out of the sunlight streaming in through the roof and into the harsh indoor lighting of the streets beneath the plate. She didn't want to remain under Zack's piercing scrutiny for a single moment longer than she had to. "Let's go."
"This must be under the plate," Zack mused as he followed her outside. Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, Aerith saw that he was looking around and seemed to recognize where they were now. "Sector 5... This is the slums."
Aerith nodded, gazing around at the familiar sight of cement pillars and greenish lighting. "Yeah. If you walk a little, you'll be in the central slums. There's lots of people, and you can go above the plate from there, too. So I'll walk you over there."
Zack turned to face her. "If I can get out onto the streets, I guess I can figure out things from there." His gaze lingered on hers for a moment longer than was normal, and she wondered if she was imagining the reluctance in his voice. It was gone by the time he added, "Okay, lead the way."
They walked together in silence for a while. Aerith did her best to study him with a few sideways glances, trying not to stare. She was pretty sure she failed horribly, but Zack appeared deep in thought and thankfully didn't seem to notice.
Aerith let out a small huff of frustration. She couldn't figure him out at all. Maybe it was because she was used to sharing emotions with the flowers, her only other conversational partners besides her mother, but Zack was extremely hard to read. She'd never met anyone like him before, who switched so quickly between joking around and being completely serious, whose tone was often difficult to interpret, but whose feelings were written so clearly across his face.
Suddenly, Aerith felt a shiver of foreboding race along her spine. The lifeless soil packed along Midgar's streets gave off very little of the planet's aura, but it was enough to give her a whisper of a warning.
"Aahhh!" she yelped, grabbing Zack's arm to make him stop walking just as the shadows on the road ahead materialized into a pair of spiky red-and-white amphibians. The creatures were terrible, not even part of the lifestream—Aerith could sense that they weren't really living beings at all. "Monsters! Zack, let's run!"
But Zack didn't budge, even as she tugged at his arm. In fact, he looked confident and almost pleased as he shifted his feet into a fighting stance and reached for the sword on his back. "Don't sweat it! I'll protect you. I'll handle it."
"You can?" she asked nervously, letting go of his arm.
Zack nodded sharply. "Just stand back, so you don't get hurt."
Aerith backed away, because even though she couldn't imagine how anyone could be so confident when dealing with monster, she trusted him. Still, she couldn't help but feel anxious as she watched the fight unfold, and didn't relax until the spiky creatures were definitely dead, melting back into harmless shadows.
"I feel so safe with you, Zack," she admitted, once she was sure they were gone.
"Is that right?" he asked, looking pleased.
"Yeah," she replied, a bit wistfully. She had never seen someone fight monsters like that—and come out unscathed. Whenever she saw monsters, all she could do was run away. She hated racing home along the city streets, desperately hoping that she'd lost the creatures pursuing her. "You can beat up monsters. You're so strong."
"Strong, huh..." He trailed off, looking thoughtful.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, a bit anxiously.
"No. It's nothing. Anyway, those things weren't tough at all!" Zack paced a few feet away, grinning again as soon as the danger had passed. Aerith couldn't help but feel uneasy as she realized how careless he seemed about fighting. He was agile and strong, that much was true, but monsters were unpredictable and dangerous. Sooner or later, he was bound to get hurt if he wasn't careful.
"So, did I look cool? A little?" He was clearly teasing now, trying to show off, but Aerith only frowned. She didn't want to encourage his recklessness.
"Hmm... Beats me," she said, a little coldly.
Zack looked surprised and a little hurt. "Aerith, in these types of situations, you should be a bit more..." He paused, searching for the words to express his thought, but Aerith didn't want to hear whatever he had been about to say.
"Hey, Zack," she said, hurrying off along the road again. "Let's go okay?"
"Uh, hell-lloo?" he called after her, sounding somewhat offended, but she didn't apologize and Zack ran to catch up with her a moment later. Aerith felt a little bad, but laughing off danger was one thing she refused to do.
They walked in silence for a while.
"It's kinda stuffy down here," Zack said at last.
"Really?" Aerith responded, taken aback. "It's always like this, though."
As they neared the central slums, Aerith felt her heart start to sink. She didn't want to say goodbye to Zack so soon. The planet's voice wouldn't be coherent here, but she wanted to ask it again if he would return and see if the answer had changed.
"I know what it is," he said suddenly, making her jump. "You can't see the sky."
Her heart gave an unpleasant lurch at the thought of it as she stopped walking. She had never liked the endless blueness hanging over her. The slums were far from perfect, but the plate was one of the things she actually liked about living in Sector 5. It protected her from the open blueness that she'd always feared would suck her in.
Aerith lowered her gaze so she wouldn't have to meet Zack's eyes.
"Who wants to see the sky?" she said, feeling oddly hurt. "I don't, that's for sure."
"Wouldn't you normally miss seeing the sky if you lived under a plate all year round?" As she stared resolutely down at the monochrome cement of the road at their feet, she thought Zack sounded surprised. Then again, his tone was significantly harder to interpret than his facial expressions.
"I guess I'm not normal," she said, surprising herself with the bitterness in her voice. As much anxiety as it gave her pretending her connection with the planet didn't exist, she'd never resented it before. But now, admitting to someone she liked that she wasn't normal stung more than she would have expected it to. She had been starting to hope that Zack was somehow like her, that he was different from everyone else in his own way, and that she wouldn't have to feel so alone anymore.
She watched Zack's shadow move as he took a few steps toward her, but stopped several feet away, as if hesitant to get too close. "You want to talk about it?"
It was the surprisingly gentle tone of his voice that made her decide to tell him the truth, even as part of her wanted to lock away her secrets somewhere he would never find them. "The sky frightens me," she confessed. "I feel like it's sucking me in..."
She looked at him as she spoke, searching for a hint of understanding, but while his expression was thoughtful, there wasn't the flash of recognition across his face she'd been hoping for. Aerith knew from experience that trying to explain the sensation to someone who didn't have any idea where she was coming from was hopeless. Elmyra, while sympathetic, hadn't really understood her fear either.
Aerith sighed and looked away again. "Weird, huh?"
"Normal is overrated," he responded decisively, taking her by surprise.
"Think... so?" she asked hopefully.
"I have an idea!" he exclaimed, and his enthusiasm made her smile as she looked up at his face again. "One day, I'll take you to see a beautiful sky, the real sky."
She couldn't help the way her face fell at the thought, but Zack went on earnestly. "It's not frightening at all. I know you're gonna love it."
She thought about it. She was many things, but brave wasn't really one of them. She wouldn't consider herself a coward, but it was easier to block out the sky and run away from monsters than to stand up to either of those things. With all the other things she worried about, especially keeping her Ancient heritage a secret, she'd never really found any motivation to actively confront her fears. Still, if Zack was with her...
Taking a deep breath, she gave a nod of acceptance.
"Great!" Zack exclaimed, and rewarded her with a dazzling grin which made her heart flutter and her cheeks go pink. She really was hopeless.
"We're here," she said, pointing to the stairs which led to the top of the plate so that she wouldn't have to look at him. "This is the central slums. But..." she trailed off, turning back to him hopefully. "Do you have to go so soon?"
He looked as reluctant as she felt, but he nodded. "I'm sorry, but duty calls."
Aerith couldn't help feeling curious. She trusted the planet enough to feel certain that Zack was trustworthy, but he seemed so mysterious. What duty was he talking about? Where had he learned how to fight monsters? How had he ended up falling into her church, and where was he going now?
She wanted to get to know him better, but now wasn't the time.
"Well, I guess I should get going, then." Under the unchanging electrical lighting of Midgar, it was always difficult to tell what time it was, but it was probably pretty late, and Aerith had to retrieve her plant from the church before going home. She doubted anyone would even go into the church in her absence—she never encountered anyone else there—but she didn't feel comfortable leaving it overnight.
She turned and started to walk off, but then paused and looked back. She had to ask. "Will I... see you again?"
"Of course!" he said, and the genuine enthusiasm sparkling in his eyes convinced her. Slowly, the strands of anxiety and loneliness that had tangled around her heart at the thought of him leaving began to unravel.
"I hope that your friend's okay, Zack," she told him.
"Huh?" He looked startled and unnerved, as if she had somehow read his mind, and she couldn't help but smile a little.
"You talk in your sleep," she explained.
"Yeah," he said, and now there was a hint of weariness in his expression, but he seemed sure of himself. "It'll be fine. I know that now."
They looked at each other with unspoken thoughts in their eyes. Neither of them ended up saying anything, and after a long moment, they turned away to leave—Aerith back to her church, and Zack back to his world above the plate. No more words were exchanged, not even goodbyes, but even as they hurried off, they couldn't help glancing back. Their eyes met as they looked back at the same time, and they both smiled.
They would see each other again, someday soon. As Aerith reached the church just after nightfall, the contented murmuring of the flowers assured her of that. She finished scooping soil into the flowerpot as quickly as she could, but she didn't hurry home immediately like she normally would have.
Instead, she steeled herself and looked up at the hole Zack had left in the church's roof. The sky was completely dark now, dotted with stars, and for some reason it didn't frighten her as much as the blueness always did. Maybe the stars, suspended against the velvet backdrop, assured her that even if she fell into the night sky, she wouldn't keep falling forever. They twinkled like faraway candles, their whispers more ethereal than those of the flowers, but one with the lifestream nevertheless.
Aerith counted. There were exactly twenty-three stars visible through the hole in the roof. As the night breeze blowing in through it stirred her hair, the thought crossed her mind, and she realized that she had never made a wish on a star before.
Now was as good a time to start as any.
Closing her eyes, she made a wish on each of the stars until she reached the last one. Twenty-two wishes... and she couldn't think of anything else to wish for.
But that was okay. She could add her last wish when she thought of one.
She thought of Zack, of how he'd proclaimed that normal is overrated, and was fairly sure that her first wish was already starting to come true.
I wish I didn't feel so alone anymore.
Maybe, she thought, as she set off for home along the narrow streets of Sector 5 hoping that her mother wouldn't be too worried about her. Maybe one day he'll make the rest of them come true, too.