Aeris hated the fact that she so rarely had time to take care of her plants any more, but at least she'd made sure that there were people trained to take over from her, because she'd known how much of her time her duties would take up. And she took care of them when she had time; she made time for some special plants, special because they needed unusual conditions or because they were new, or gifts from Sephiroth. But today she couldn't really do that, since she preferred to keep her plants to the life cycle best suited to the local climate rather than deliberately altering the cycles to force them to bloom in winter for example, and there was no productive attention she could give them now.
So, she'd come to this isolated window to enjoy one of her oldest winter pastimes, watching the snow fall on Midgar. It had been this which had told her that they were really free of Hojo and his labs when she was five, after Sephiroth had helped them escape, apologising for the timing, because security had been relaxed a bit during the Winter Solstice Festival. Before then she'd only seen snow in pictures, and hadn't believed something so beautiful could be real. Her first mother had been dead by the end of that winter, living just long enough to see that Aeris was taken in and adopted by Elmyra Gainsborough, her second mother and more her mother in some ways than Ifalna, even though, or perhaps because she'd never tried to replace Ifalna. And even after she died Ifalna had told Aeris tales, tales of her father sometimes, and tales from Cetra history, or Cetra who'd sacrificed themselves to serve the Planet, but most often she'd told Aeris about how Sephiroth had risked himself to help them escape, even after her father had left him to suffer.
She knew full well that it was her insistence on recounting that story to anyone who'd listen that had won over enough support for the older Cetra to accept that Cloud had every right to demand Sephiroth become his promised consort. And she hated thinking of what sort of price he must have paid for his decision to help them escape, and his refusal to escape with them, because that would bring ShinRa after the three of them in far more force and with far more effort than had been devoted to just Ifalna and Aeris. She shivered at the memory of how cold and almost cruel Hojo had been, of the way he'd looked at her as an interesting specimen, an unusual crossbreed and nothing more, even though he hadn't wanted to experiment on her then and wondered what he'd have done to her if he'd ever gotten her in his power again.
A strong arm wrapped about her shoulders then, pulling her back against a warm muscular chest, and she relaxed in the one-armed hug her bodyguard was giving her, comfortable enough with him to do so after the last nine months. But she didn't turn to look at him, preferring to focus on the beauty of the landscape outside, and by now he knew her well enough not to be offended by that.
"Cold? Or something else?" But he wouldn't be offended if she didn't say anything and that was reason enough for her to answer him.
"Bad memories. I was remembering how much I loved seeing snow for the first time, after my brother helped us escape from Hojo, and that made me think of what he was like, and imagine what he must have done to Sephiroth for helping us. He could have escaped himself, but if he had my mother would have kept him with us, and ShinRa would have hunted for us even harder, so he stayed behind in that sterile hell to protect us."
"I'm not surprised. He is brave, and so are you." Aeris smiled and shut her eyes for a moment, leaning back against Zack in trust and wrapping her hands around his arm, appreciating his perception, since so many people tended to dismiss Sephiroth's courage now, simply because he was a consort.
"Thank you. Even when all I knew about snow was from what Sephiroth sometimes said about Nibelheim before my father left him there and from pictures I thought it was beautiful. And it's especially beautiful when it falls on Midgar, hiding all the dirt and how in some places it's falling apart, because we had to get as many people out of that place as we could."
"Because of all the pollution, and how ShinRa drained the life from the area you mean? There's something I don't get though, why build the palace and the main slave-trading hall here, so close to Midgar?"
"A reminder for us of the greatest scar on the face of the Planet that we need to heal somehow, and we didn't have anything to do with putting the main slave-trading hall here, but our home is one of the two political centres of our world, like it or not."
"So most of the Cetra who're likely to buy slaves keep some sort of home nearby, and they combine buying slaves with some sort of political efforts." She shouldn't be surprised by Zack's swift and accurate summary; he'd belonged to other Cetra before her, usually high nobility, like her, but she was.
"Yes. And the slave-trading hall near the Council buildings is almost as large for similar reasons." She pulled gently at his arm with a sigh, accepting that she'd spent enough time watching the snow falling, and she could probably talk Cloud into lending her his consort or his concubine to play with. "You don't have to keep watching this with me; I'm sure you don't find it as fascinating as I do, and I can find something else to do if you're worried about leaving me alone with my thoughts." He let go of Aeris, but even without looking at him she could tell it was reluctantly.
"It never snowed where I grew up - I was ten before I saw it snow, and my previous owners tended to stay in areas where it didn't snow much. I still find it nice to watch it snowing for a while." Then he'd probably never had the chance to play in the snow either.
"Come with me then Zack, we can wrap up warm and build a snowman, or have a snowball fight." She turned to look at her bodyguard, and tugged at his arm, glad of the chance to just play for a while.
"Sure, that sounds fun. We can swing by the kitchen and have someone prepare hot drinks for us every hour or so to warm us up too." Zack had an eager grin on his face, but he was still thinking of her comfort.
"That's a great idea. We can stay out longer that way, can't we?"
