Things to Know: This is an AU; potential spoilers; I don't own Final Fantasy VII, etc.
On her thirteenth birthday her mother buys her a dress. They've been on the run for a long time, and Aerith is hungrier than she can ever remember being. Her fingernails are lined with dirt and there are tiny blood stains in the heels of her shoes. She's too tired to be optimistic or pessimistic, and she's forgotten that she has a birthday - that things like birthdays exist.
"I'm sorry I couldn't wrap it," she says. She sits on the edge of the creaking motel bed. They'll stay for a night, like they usually do, and move on in the early morning. Perhaps they'll finally take a boat to Wutai, where they could buy a house and sleep easy. "And I'm sorry I made you cut your hair."
"It's fine," she says, taking the pink bundle. A ghostly smile flits across her lips. It's always been her favorite color. Whenever they see pink flowers, Aerith takes the time to stroke their petals and inhale their scent, though they don't see many flowers. In fact, they don't see many things growing at all, unless they're made of steel.
Her hand rises to touch the ragged ends of her hair. She'd cried the first time it happened, when she was seven. They'd been tailed closely through the city by a pack of lean men in suits, and they'd only been saved by - well, Aerith wasn't sure what, but something had happened and the men had gone away. Afterwards, her mother had found an alleyway, taken out a knife, and chopped her braid off.
It's too distinct, she'd explained. They'll look for you, a girl with a pink ribbon and a long braid, and - they won't look for a boy.
Over the years she's gotten more and more boyish. She's underfed, scrawny, and she'd started puberty at twelve. Her face is covered in zits. She looks like a street urchin, the ones who played soccer underneath the Plate, jabbing the ball with their scraped knees.
She pulls on the dress. It bags around her waist, her hips, where her breasts are supposed to be. In the cracked mirror she doesn't look like a girl at all. The pink makes the sores around her mouth and nostrils stand out, and the skirt falls in waves around her feet. She has the urge to cry.
Her mother squeezes her shoulder. She stands behind Aerith, haggard, a woman worn to skin and bones. "You'll grow into it," Ifalna says, and kisses the part of her hair.
Ifalna dies two weeks after her fourteen birthday. It's been a long time coming. For the past six months she coughed up blood, and her eyes were fever-bright, and whenever they hugged Aerith could feel the heat wavering off of her. She was burning from the inside-out; her heart was a torch and she was a matchstick house.
Aerith falls to her knees. Luckily, they've been taking a cut through the forest; there are no people around to see the horror that crosses her face, or the tears that form in her eyes. "Mama?" she says. She grabs her, she shakes her, she forces her words between clenched teeth: "Mama, mama, please - wake up, you can't just lay here, you have to get up..."
She doesn't. She looks at peace, finally; even in sleep she'd had the tortured look of someone suffering from terrible nightmares, and now, well...She'd even had the time to close her eyes.
"Oh, mama," Aerith says, raggedly, and kisses her forehead. She smooths her hair back. They've been over this before.
Aerith, she'd said, in a greasy cafe somewhere between Midgar and Kalm, If I die, I want you to take the materia out of my hair. You can wear it in your own, if it's long enough, or as a necklace, or - whatever you want, but you have to keep it safe. Promise me.
I promise, she'd said. Now she keeps it. She untangles the ribbon her mother wore, and the materia glows. Aerith clenches her fingers around it. It's solid and warm and it buzzes, and she finds herself laughing as she weeps.
Mama? she'd asked after they left the diner. What if I die?
You won't, Ifalna had said. I promise.
It's summer. Aerith has never been this far north before, to the mountains; it had been dangerous, her mother had said, but Aerith is quick and light on her feet and good at sneaking. She barely has to use the knife her mother kept in her boots.
She plans on circling Nibelheim and going south from there. It's been years since she last saw the suited men. Midgar will be safe, she thinks, for a while.
One cold morning she is filching food from a garden, kneeling in the dirt, fingers scrabbling for hidden bulbs, for starchy roots. Her stomach rumbles. The small town is still and quiet, and it is in the gray light of predawn that the boy finds her.
His hair is ridiculous, she has the time to think, before the panic sets in. Her hand goes to her boot, feeling for the knife hilt, and her pulse pounds in her throat. "Please," she says.
He can't be any older than twelve. She watches him take her in: the skinniness, the torn clothes, the grime. She's been growing her hair out, but it's still short enough and she's still small enough that she passes for a boy, especially in this baggy farmer's get-up.
"Please," she repeats, softer this time, and she relaxes. She has her fingers on the hilt, now, and if he moves - if he makes a single sound, she can - she will -
His eyes are wide and blue and he has a serious mouth. He looks very sad for her. She can't decide whether that breaks her heart or angers her, and she rocks back on her heels, gnawing her lip, no longer sure if she can wound him if she has to. Maybe knock him out, but -
"There are tomatoes," he says, tilting his head, "over there."
That startles a laugh out of her. He nods and goes back inside. Aerith fills her pockets with tomatoes, and finds a few apples in a bin, and a wedge of cheese, left out overnight.
Oh well, she thinks. It flakes off on her fingers. It's been wrapped up. I've eaten worse.
Sometimes she prayers to the materia. It's silly, but comforting. Her hair is long enough for her to wear it in it now. She takes it out at night and stares at it, imagining she can see the faces of her father, of her mother, of -
Thank you, she says, for the boy. And thank you that I'm still alive.
She sleeps, her body spread over the roots of a gnarled tree. Her dreams are green and swirling and untroubled.
Midgar is no safer for a girl of sixteen than it is for a girl of seven, but only in the normal ways. There are no suited men, no furtive glances over her shoulders, no need to run through alleyways and hide behind trash bins.
And there is something else for her in Midgar. She finds it the first night, when she has stumbled, too afraid to sleep, terrified of snatching hands and leering men and wary of doorsteps, for hours. It is a ruin, but as she walks by it the materia in her hair fzzts, and glows so bright it momentarily blinds her.
"Well," she says, "I suppose I should go in, right?"
It pulses, white and green: Yes.
Inside there is the smell of fresh dirt and grass. Aerith sucks in the air as quickly as she can. In the dimness she can make out the shape of benches, and - towards the front of the building...
Flowers. Hundreds of them, blooming, bobbing, as if they've been waiting for her all this time, waiting for her to discover them, waiting for...
"Waiting for me to use them as a bed," she laughs, and curls among them. They feel like arms, clasped around her, like hands comforting her, and the sound of the wind through them is her mother, saying, We can rest here for a little while. It'll be safe.
She makes a basket out of wood. There's a lot of it just lying around, and she's always been handy. Every other day she fills it with flowers and walks the slums.
It's not for money - well, not after the first time. The first time she's so hungry it has to be about money. Of course, she could always steal, but she doesn't want the trouble. No, it becomes about the confusion on the faces of her customers. They haven't seen anything colorful in a long time, either; and some of them scoff, but most of them smile, after a moment, and toss a gil into her palm.
By the second month in Midgar she's still scrappy, yet the dress no longer looks like a pink bag on her. She's even earned enough to take a weekly shower.
The third month is when the trouble starts.
SOLDIERs don't come below the Plate very often. Aerith knows this, so when she sees the boy (spiky black hair, smiling at a vendor) she tries to make herself seem small. Unworthy of notice. She feels his eyes go to her, so she shoves the flower into the palm of her customer, pockets his gil with a muttered thank you, and turns.
Her ribbon catches on something on the stall. She hears it rip, and her hair falls around her shoulders. Her mother would say, Get the materia, Aerith. It's more important than you can imagine, but - he's so close, getting closer, and the old fight-or-flight instinct is kicking in, and her legs are itching to run. She has to get away. She can come back for the materia later.
Sorry, mother, she thinks, and runs.
He's quick; of course he is, he's a SOLDIER. He yells, "Hey, wait!" She darts through the crowd, her basket banging against her hip. In a shop window she sees her face, the color high in her cheeks, her eyes green, frantic, her mouth an 'o' of fear.
Aerith leads him deeper into the slums, where dilapidated houses become proper ruins. She knows this place better than anyone. She vaults over fences, ducks under old signs, runs through the loose soil of dead gardens, dodging weeds as tall as her waist - and he's still after her, close by, closing in, and...and she remembers clean hallways, and needles, and -
The boy falls, and she keeps running. He yells, "Hey! I just wanted to give you back your purse!"
That stops her in her tracks. She's sweaty, and she pauses, catching her breath. "What?"
He's grimacing, and he's right: he has her purse in his hand. Much to her surprise, he smiles at her (and his eyes are blue, so blue, bluer than - than the sky), and says, "I'm sorry if I scared you. Guess I should have said that first, huh?"
His smile begins to fade, and she realizes thirty seconds of silence have passed. She holds up a finger, the universal language for wait.
The world seems curiously still, curiously silent, around them. Aerith manages, "Yes, that would've been nice." She returns his smile, wanly, and flushes in embarrassment. She's made a fool out of herself. She toes the dirt, scuffs her feet, looks nervously to the left, nervously to the right. "I'm...sorry."
"It's me who should apologize." He scratches the nape of his neck. "How about I make it up to you?"
"How?" she asks, curious despite herself. He isn't what she expected a SOLDIER to be - a lot more goofy, a lot more laidback.
"How about...a date?" His grin is white against his tan skin, white and wide and honest and pleasant.
This time, Aerith doesn't have to tell herself to smile.
"If it includes a meal, I'm in," she puts her fists on her hips and mimes a curtsy.
He bows. "Zack," he says, and shakes her hand enthusiastically. She wonders if smiling so much ever gets exhausting. "Zack Fair!"
There is another pause, almost imperceptible, as she considers giving him her real name - and then he says, "Oh, shoot, I almost forgot," and smacks himself on his forehead. He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a frayed ribbon. The materia on the end spins, and Aerith gasps.
"Thank you. Thank you so much! I'm Aerith."
The materia winks in the light, as if she and it are sharing a secret. As Zack passes it to her their fingertips brush, and she swears she feels a bolt of static. Their shared smiles, this time, are shy.
"Do you live here?" he asks. She nods.
They're standing outside the church. It must be late; Aerith imagines that there's a sunset, on top of the Plate, and that it's red and gold and glorious.
She's never done this before, but she has an idea of what to do. "Thank you for the date."
"It was my pleasure."
They stare at each other. Aerith finds herself saying, lips numb, "You have beautiful eyes. They're very...blue. Like the sky."
"Thanks. Your - "
She leans up and kisses him on the cheek, face flaming. He finishes, " - eyes are very green. Very, very green. And, of course, you're beautiful besides that! I just - you know, you complimented me on my eyes, and..."
"I know. Will I...see you again?"
"That depends." He shrugs, face stern, but those eyes - those blue, blue eyes - sparkle. "If I say maybe, will I get another kiss? You know, one for good luck?"
"Mhm." She taps the tip of her nose. "I don't know...If you say yes, you'll get another kiss the next time you come. Maybe. I'll think about it."
"Aerith," he says, and laughs. He wraps his arms around her. She squeals in surprise, but it's...nice. She hasn't been hugged since her mother died. He is warm and strong against her, and she feels - suddenly and ridiculously - safe. "Aerith, I'll be sure to come back as soon as I can."
Her life becomes a pattern: Sell flowers. Speak to people. Spend time with Zack. He helps her make a cart, and she knows, the same way she's beginning to know a lot of things, that she's in love with him, and that he's in love with her. Being around him is easy. He isn't what she expected, not out of a Shinra employee, and - that's that.
One day he brings a friend: a thin boy with slumped shoulders and a crest of blond hair. Aerith is in the flowers, and she has a queer sense of deja vu as she looks at him. Zack introduces him as Cloud. He has a serious mouth.
"It's nice to meet you," she says, and hugs him. He's so small. "Any friend of Zack's is a friend of mine."
"You must have a lot of friends, then," he says, still serious. Zack laughs and claps him on the shoulder. Aerith sees him looking at the bread roll on one of the benches, and back to her, and she smiles.
"Aerith," Zack asks her. It's just the two of them. They sit side-by-side, touching from the shoulder to the knee. She's been making him a crown of flowers.
"Yes?"
"What if I don't come back, one day?" There is no laughter, no sparkling, no light in his eyes (they are getting a little bit greener every time she sees him). Aerith swallows. There's a lump in her chest, and a heaviness in her throat, and she can't quite manage words around them. Her hands go still.
I'll love you forever, she could say, and it would be the truth. He already knows.
"I'd remember you," she says, quietly, and her hands resume their work. There's a gravity to it now. "And I'd pray for you. And I'd think about you all the time."
His head is bent. After a moment, he takes his hand in hers; clasps it, and squeezes it, and says, voice rough, "That's my girl."
He's crying. Aerith nods, and climbs into his lap. He puts his head on her shoulder. The tears wet her dress, and she can hear his hitched breathing.
She hums to him, and strokes his hair, and when he clears his throat and cracks a joke and looks up, eyes red-rimmed, she goes along with it.
Whenever he's gone she thinks about writing him letters, but - she doesn't have the money to spare on ink and paper, and her writing has always been clumsy.
One day, he doesn't come back. She waits and waits and waits. She cries, sometimes, into the flowers, or to the materia, but neither of them have anything to say to her. Recently she's been hearing voices. She talks to them, but they don't talk back, and they don't tell her anything - not really.
Something is coming, they say. She asks what, and they're silent.
A man in a black suit comes. The fear of them is still ingrained in her. She backs up against the wall, fists clenched, eyes wide, ready to run - but he shakes his head.
"I'm Tseng," he says. His hair is black and long. "Are you Aerith?"
She nods, lips tight, turned in at the corners.
"I regret to inform you that Zack Fair has been missing in action for over a year, now," he says. There is no sympathy in his face, and she almost hates him - but she pities him more. "We have to declare him dead. We will be having a funeral for him. You were mentioned to Cissnei, one of Zack's friends, as one of his loved ones; and as he will be particularly honored at this function, we would like to invite you. Shinra will provide - "
"No," she says. Her voice echoes. It's too loud, so she inhales and tries again: "No. No, thank you."
"Are you sure, Miss Aerith?"
They don't know my last name. She makes her expression as smooth as glass, confused, a little surprised. "Yes. Zack and I weren't very close - I mean, he came and helped me with my flowers, but...He was just a very nice young man."
"He would like as many people as possible - "
"I'm sorry, but I just think it would be improper."
His hands are behind his back. He nods. "Very well."
She doesn't look up from the flowers until he's gone. Her blood roars in her ears. She shuts her eyes, and sees blue, blue and green, and the voices rise up, humming, hymnal, about her.
Is he dead? she asks them, dully.
Someone laughs. It sounds like her mother, on the rare occasion when she'd turn her face up to the sky and tell Aerith that life was beautiful, that they were lucky to be alive.
Ifalna says, No.
After that they - the Turks, she knows now - come frequently to watch her. Only one or two of them ever talk. Cissnei asks her about the flowers, and the redhead, Reno, calls her sister and chats about the weather and smokes. She tells him it's bad for the plants, and they laugh, but she knows that none of them are her friends. She thinks that she and Cissnei could have been friends, in a different life; she knows that Reno and her would never be on easy terms, not in any life.
Years pass. She buys another dress (still pink), and a slim leather jacket, and new boots. Her mother's knife has grown blunt, so she fashions a staff.
The voices get louder all the time, and the materia will, quite often, grow so hot it's uncomfortable to wear in her hair. When she puts it in her palm it rolls around. It's anxious to be gone. She asks it, bemused, Where? - and it hisses, it crackles, and the voices sigh, Wait. She smiles.
There are no Turks today. She sets her basket down, pops out her back; thinks, I'm getting old, and laughs. The sound is oddly cheerful in the church. She's made a new friend, a widow named Elmyra, who always stops to admire her flowers. She told her she was too thin and invited her to dinner. She reminds Aerith of her mother.
She bends down to pick up her basket. Perhaps, she thinks, she can sell a few more - brighten up a few more peoples' lives -
The door creaks open, and she goes still. There's a hammer in her chest and there are klaxons wailing in her brain. No one comes, not this late in the day. Her grip on the basket is white-knuckled, and she tenses -
Someone groans. Feet shuffle.
Aerith's breath gusts out of her, and she runs, she runs forward to the two sickly boys, one with his eyes open (Zack!) and the other - Cloud - unconscious. She throws her arms around both of them. She's weeping so hard she can't even speak, and Zack's gloved hand slides down her spine to the small of her back. They put Cloud on a bench. Aerith lays her hand on his forehead and frowns, says, through shaking lips, "He'll be all right, he's just - sick. We need to give him some time. And...there's something else, but...Not now, whatever it is."
Zack nods, his smile tired and crooked. His eyes have a momentary distance to them, like he's seeing something else, like he is somewhere else, and then they flip back to her and re-focus. "I came back."
She embraces him. He's grown into his shoulders, now, and he hasn't shaved in a week or so. His stubble scratches the side of her face as he kisses the shell of her ear. She hiccups laughter.
He kisses her mouth, finally, his hands rising to cup her face.
The voices sigh.
Two weeks later they're on the run, accompanied by Cloud (awake, now), a man named Barret, Cloud's childhood crush Tifa, and a lion named Red XIII. Aerith knows they'll met more people soon enough.
In the quiet one night Zack slips his hand into hers and says, "This is the life for us, huh?"
"I'm used to it." They're sitting a little apart from the fire.
"Me too."
After a moment, he says, "I'm sorry I made you wait so long."
She laughs. His eyebrows knit together, and he says, "What?" He's a trifle concerned, but his mouth - as always, even now - has the hint of a smile.
Aerith shakes her head, still giggling. "Zack, I've been waiting all my life."
He knows something about her, something that neither of them quite understand yet, so he nods.
She does not tell him that she is still waiting.
She does not tell him that she will be waiting until the day she dies.