A/N: I would like to thank RinoaWings for convincing me to write another chapter. (I recommend reading her fic it's really good it called 'Unbelievable!') And please review, I'll review your stories in return. thankyou
WARNING: THIS IS A MUSHY FIC. If you don't like mush try my other sort fic 'freedom'
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters or places.
Chance Encounter
Chapter 2
Zax got out of bed. According to the clock next to him it was 2:10 in the morning. He didn't really read it but he already knew what time it was. He didn't know what kept waking him at this hour. They were dreams, vivid and terrifying in his sleep. But when he woke and tried to remember them they slipped though his fingers like water. Every night for the past week he woke up at 2:00 and tried to go back to sleep he usually gave up after ten minutes.
He got up and wandered through to the kitchen, if he was going to be awake he might as well be properly awake. And for that he needed coffee.
With coffee in hand he looked to the living room, the couch and TV beckoned to him; to sit and wait for the sunrise. Zax normally got up with the sun, before these nightmares started. And he saw no reason to worry his housemate with trivial hassles, like minor insomnia.
Aerith sat on the roof of her church; the old run-down chapel had been abandoned so she grew her flowers there. So in a way it had become her church. She came here to be alone in the silent hours of early morning. That man, he had confused her. The flower he bought for her; she had kept it in her hair for the rest of the day. Now even though that was two weeks ago, and the flower had withered and died days ago she still had it.
Sitting up here alone with a dried flower in her hands she felt incredibly sad. She knew her heart was always right. It had said they would meet again, why hadn't they? She looked at the flower; she hated seeing dead flowers. She breathed in and muttered a few words of an almost extinct language then breathed softly on the flower. Before her eyes the petals became soft and yellow and the stalk green and healthy. She wasn't sure how many times she could do this to it before the flower simply stopped responding. The planet felt her sadness, and sent its song to cheer her. Aerith appreciated when she did this for her. She showed her thanks by letting the song escape into the people. Which is to say she sung for the whole world to hear, it wasn't her fault no one was awake yet.
Zax was bored with watching television and had finished his coffee a while ago. The sun still wouldn't be up for about an hour so he decided to go for a walk, as long as he was back before his flatmate was up. Which was marginally before the sun. The man didn't like being second to anyone or anything. Zax thought it slightly neurotic to get up before the sun just so it won't beat you.
He shut the door quietly behind him and turned out into the street. He was at first intending to walk just to the Shinra gardens; an engineering feat, 2 square kilometres of gardens. And all of it fake. Nothing grew in Midgar. They had to replant everything every three months. The trees, the grass, hell even the soil was imported. But on a whim he decided to go to the slums, he had no idea why but he didn't really care either.
It was dank under the plate, dank and dark. He wondered how people could live in these conditions and what forced them to live like this, for surely they didn't choose this life. Zax thought for a second, he knew what forced them to live here, finance and human nature. Humans are greedy and always trying not to be on the bottom rung. More like they're always trying to beat each other, prove –somehow- they are better, just like Sephiroth and his having to get up before the sun. The entire human race, including himself, Zax decided is neurotic.
He was in sector five; sector five was one of the few slums he'd only been to once before. He heard a soft voice at a distance, singing. He couldn't make out the words, he wasn't even sure there were any, just a lilting hypnotic and soothing tune, that never sound like it could end or begin, it was a song that spoke of eternity. The human mind cannot understand eternity, but this song, Zax thought, was the closest he would come to understanding. It was beautiful, and it drew him in. He followed the sound to an old dilapidated church. There was no one inside but it defiantly was coming from here. He saw some stairs that probably led up to a balcony.
The steps creaked under his feet; they looked like they would hold but the look of things never made him more comfortable. He calmed himself down and climbed the rest or the stairs, at the top was a landing and yes a balcony, but there was no one here either. Zax walked to the opposite end of the gallery and found a small hole in the roof with a small stepladder underneath it. It looked big enough for him. But common sense and training told him not to climb all the way, just to have a look first.
His head poked up though the hole and he looked around, over to the east sat a girl, the one he'd met two weeks ago, he couldn't believe the coincidence. And she was the one singing. Aerith? Yes that was her name. Zax climbed another rung on the ladder so he could rest his head in his hands and his elbows comfortably on the roof. Aerith stopped singing, she didn't destroy the magic of the song by simply stopping, more she trailed off, it gave the effect the song was still going it was just beyond human hearing.
"That was beautiful." Zax said and made himself known to the girl. She gasped and whirled around, she hadn't known he was there.
"It's you, z…Zax. I didn't know you were there, you gave me a shock."
"Sorry I really didn't mean to startle you, I'm not intruding am I?"
"No, not at all, the planet sings to be heard, she sings though me." She smiled, that smile of light.
"You're flower's dead." Zax pointed out with a grin. She looked at it, the life was gone again. She sighed but she didn't need it to remind her of this man, because he was here. In front of her. She stood up and walked over. Zax stepped down and off the ladder moving away slightly to give her room to come down.
She had her flower basket over her arm again. "Do you take that every where?" Zax asked with humour in his tone.
"No silly." She said giggling, responding to his seemingly unintended joke. "I'm going to sell them, if you cut them before the sun comes up, they wilt slower."
"How do you manage to grow anything? Nothing grows in Midgar."
"Well my church is different."
"Your church?"
"Okay so I don't own it, but no one else uses it." She picked up a flower that she had dropped a few days ago with out noticing, there was almost no life left in it. But she muttered in her language and breathed softly, renewing the flower's former beauty.
"Wow," breathed Zax, "how did you do that?" She just smiled and held it out for him.
"Hmm, how odd we must seem together." She muttered very softly.
Zax's makou enhanced hearing picked it up "how?"
"You're a soldier, fist class right? And I'm a poor flower girl."
"Does that matter?"
She felt herself melting under his gaze. Those beautiful shining cobalt eyes. "Not at all."
"Would you be interested in dinner sometime?"
She smiled a little taken aback by the suddenness of the question. "Uh huh" she said with a tiny nod.
"Damn it being Wednesday. How about Saturday? I'll come and meet you here? 6-ish?"
"Of course. I'd love to." They both beamed. Then Zax looked around and saw the dark had lifted slightly.
"Damn it! The sun's up."
"What's wrong?" Aerith asked
"I have to go now." There was sadness in his voice, a regret that he couldn't stay and talk longer. "I will see you on Saturday, here."
"Okay, do you really have to go?"
"I'm sorry, but yes" he trotted down the stairs not afraid of any breaking. She stayed on the balcony "good bye Zax!" she called
"For now but not forever." He replied.