AN: Sorry again for the wait! Due to its episodic nature (and very long chapters), this story is admittedly much more difficult to write than any of my other projects. Updates will probably always be sporadic, but that does not mean I've forgotten about it or that I'm less dedicated to it than my other stories. Thank you so much for your patience in waiting for this update!

Also, if you're enjoying this story, please take the time to leave a quick review. Even the smallest bit of feedback is really helpful to me!

Aerith didn't need to water the flowers anymore, now that the hole in the church opened them to the sky and the rain could fall freely down on them. It was actually kind of soothing, in a lonesome, sleepy way, to sit just out of reach of the water droplets and see them patter gently down on the leaves and blossoms and surrounding dirt. The dry, grayish soil became a richer, darker hue as it was drenched by rainfall.

Aerith sat on the old floorboards, hugging her legs to her chest and trying to stay at least somewhat alert. She'd been having some difficulty sleeping recently, and that left her in somewhat of a continuous daze.

Insomnia wasn't entirely new to her, but there wasn't much she could do about it. The nightmares came and went with seemingly no explanation. It had been years since Aerith and her mother had been in hiding together, but sometimes Aerith woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if someone was chasing her and she wasn't safe. She was reluctant to ever wake up Elmyra with frightened rambling about the fragments of memory that no longer seemed to fit together, but it felt like torture lying silently awake or in a troubled sleep, her heart beating rapidly like the wings of a trapped bird in her chest, until the sun rose and chased away the darkness.

She'd become even more restless after her most recent encounter with Zack, after realizing he was a member of SOLDIER and that he was constantly in danger.

Even the planet, with all its insight into the minds and hearts of the people who lived there, couldn't predict injury and death. What if, after all its insistence that Aerith and Zack were meant to help each other and change each other's lives, Zack was hurt or killed fighting for Shinra? What then?

Aerith sighed, her breath stirring the flowers in front of her. She wished she had a way to contact Zack, to reassure herself that he was okay, but she hadn't thought of exchanging phone numbers with him until after he had already run off.

You'll be careful… she'd needed to know, right?

Always am, he'd promised.

But sometimes bad things happened no matter how careful you were. Aerith squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to block out the memory of that day at the train station. She and Ifalna had been as careful as they could when they escaped from their captors, but they hadn't gotten very far before they were found and her mother had been wounded. Aerith didn't have many memories left from her life before Midgar—she had pushed them to the back of her mind, from where they surfaced only in her dreams—but she would never forget the day her mother died.

How could she?

She had been too shell-shocked to cry then, as Elmyra led her away from the train station, but she had looked back over her shoulder and felt terrible sorrow as she saw the green light of the lifestream descend upon her mother.

And sometimes, even though it had been years since that day, she still woke up with her face wet with tears that she knew were for her mother.

Why couldn't we have had an ordinary life together? she wondered, wistfully. Why did we have to be born Cetra in a world full of humans? A world where being different, being special, was dangerous. She'd asked the planet that question hundreds of times, with varying degrees of resentment, but it never answered, and eventually she had needed to just accept that she would never know anything else.

And the person who'd fallen into the church, who instantly captured her heart, was part of SOLDIER. He was also different, also in danger. It wasn't safe to care about him. But not caring was something that would never come easily to Aerith. She was too sentimental, too kindhearted to stop caring.

"Where is Zack now?" she asked the planet, closing her eyes wearily. "Will you at least tell me if he's safe?"

But the sound of raindrops against flower petals and gentle wordless murmuring were the only things she heard. The planet was quiet, withholding its answer.

It rained on and off for the next few days. Aerith came to the church every day as soon as she woke up in the morning, went home for lunch, and then came right back until Elmyra called her and told her to come back for dinner. She'd always spent more time at the church than at home, but she went there even more lately. If Zack did come back soon, she wanted to be there.

Eventually, her diligence was rewarded.

"Look at all this rain we've been having," Zack said by way of greeting, grinning as he ran a hand through his soaked black hair. "I figured it was a good time to go beneath the plate and shelter here for a while."

"Zack!" Aerith exclaimed, running over to him. Part of her wanted to throw her arms around him to express her relief, but she stopped short of tackling him and folded them across her chest instead. "What took you so long to get back here? I expected you to at least stop by to let me know you were okay."

"You were worried about me?" he asked, looking far too amused by the idea.

"Of course," she said, frowning. "I saw the look on your face right before you left. You were going to do something dangerous again."

"I'm sorry," he said, sobering a little. "I didn't realize you'd be worried."

"It's okay," she said, softening her expression. "But let me know next time, okay? You don't even have to come all the way back here. Just call me or something." She told him her number, and Zack put it into his phone's contacts.

"You know, this is definitely the most unusual way I've ever gotten a girl's phone number," he said playfully. "Usually they're not so straightforward about it."

"Well, I don't play those kinds of games," Aerith said, keeping her tone light but meaning it all the same. "Usually, it's the boys who are playing them with me."

Zack laughed. "I know, you're totally different. I've never met anyone even the slightest bit like you before. But that's one of the things I like about you the most."

She still couldn't help the way her heartbeat quickened and her face flushed when he said things like that. But this time, instead of looking away, she smiled. It was a shy smile, but she still felt bold as she held his gaze. Again, their eye contact lasted a bit too long, became a bit too intense, and they fell into silence.

"So," Zack said, shifting his feet, "if you aren't busy… d'you want to get started on building that flower wagon we talked about last time?"

Aerith tilted her head to one side, amused. "You're really enthusiastic about that, aren't you? To be honest, I thought you were joking when you first mentioned it."

"Not at all!" he responded wholeheartedly, the way he seemed to be wholehearted about every idea he spoke of. His excitement was contagious, and Aerith couldn't help but smile. "I meant it! SOLDIER might be a glamorous job, but it doesn't pay as well as everyone seems to expect. I need all the cash I can get!"

Aerith giggled, and Zack looked pleased.

"All right," she said. "We can start today. I hope you have more of an idea how to make a wagon than I do, because I know nothing about building!"

"Me neither," Zack admitted. "I guess we'll figure it out together."

"Okay," Aerith responded, nodding.

"So first, we get some wood," Zack said, his gaze becoming distant as he focused on some picture in his imagination. "That'll be the best thing to make it out of. Maybe we can paint it with vivid colors to attract more attention. I think green would stand out nicely. There isn't really anything green in Midgar, besides…" He trailed off, paused, and started again, this time on a different subject entirely. "It'll have to have wheels so that we can move it around easily. And it needs to be big enough to keep lots of flowers in, but small enough so that you can push it."

"Mmhmm," Aerith agreed, nodding as she pictured what he had described. She hesitated, then asked, "What were you going to say just now?"

Zack looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"You said 'there aren't a lot of green things in Midgar, besides…' and then never finished what you were saying," she reminded him, tilting her head to one side.

"Oh." He grinned. "I meant your eyes. They're a really pretty color. I've never met anyone with eyes that shade of green before."

"Oh," she echoed, blushing. She was glad that he liked them, not so sure she was glad they were so noticeably different. "Thanks."

Aerith couldn't remember much about her mother, but she knew that Ifalna had had the same green eyes that she saw whenever she looked into the mirror. They were a sign of her Cetra heritage, the one thing she couldn't completely hide. As Zack started to talk about their flower wagon again, she brushed her bangs in front of her eyes as subtly as she could. In her case, being noticed was never a good thing.

"We also need to buy flowerpots so we can transplant the flowers," she reminded Zack, "and sell them intact, so they don't die after only a few days."

"Good idea," he agreed, and Aerith exhaled in relief, glad that she didn't have to argue with him over it. She didn't want to make it any more obvious than necessary that she was physically pained by any damage done to the plants.

For some reason, being near wood didn't bother her the same way, even though it came from chopping down trees. Aerith wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe it was because in a way the tree continued to live on in a different form; it didn't wither away like a picked flower. Parts of her church were made from wood—it had been built before the mako reactor and the plate, when trees hadn't been so hard to come by—and the planet didn't object to being used that way. The murmur of the lifestream still emanated from the wooden beams and rafters, however faintly.

"I know where we can buy those things," Aerith said. "They're not easy to come by in the slums, but I've found some stores that sell them."

"Great," Zack responded, seeming pleasantly surprised.

"They're near the edge of the plate, though," she told him. "Around here, there's usually no need for flowerpots, since the soil is too lifeless for any plants to grow. The saleswoman says that I'm her only customer from the slums. She's gotten to know me pretty well by now; I can never seem to resist bringing one more flower home with me."

Zack smiled. "I don't find that very surprising."

"Good," said Aerith. "If you did, it would mean you don't know me at all."

Zack didn't reply, but his vivid blue eyes looked thoughtful.

"Should we get going?" she suggested, offering her hand.

He took it.

A few hours later, they'd gathered all the supplies they needed: some old planks of wood, fairly worn but intact tires, nails, used tools, flowerpots, and various colored paints. Thankfully, they'd also unearthed an instruction booklet called "How to Build a Wagon" in one of the shops and decided to buy it.

There was a lot of carry, so they made a few trips to drop things off at the church while they shopped. At last, they returned with the last of their purchases; Zack carried the stack of wood on his shoulders, while Aerith hauled a heavy bucket full of nails and tools. By the time they accumulated everything they'd need, both were exhausted from walking all the way to the edge of the plate and back.

Zack flopped unceremoniously down in one of the pews, sighing and closing his eyes. "I didn't realize that building a wagon would be so much work."

"Well, we can't turn back now," Aerith said, hoping he would agree.

"Definitely not," he said, without opening his eyes.

"Maybe we should call it a day, though," she suggested, glancing cautiously at the darkening patch of sky through the hole in the roof. "It's getting late."

"Yeah," Zack agreed, yawning. He ruffled his spiky black hair with one hand in a seemingly absentminded way. "After working at the Shinra building and then coming here and doing more work, it's been a very long day."

Aerith felt a shiver run up her spine whenever she heard the name Shinra. She wasn't entirely sure why, only that the feeling of foreboding was so deeply rooted in her that it felt instinctual. The flowers responded to her wariness with murmurs of warning, sharing her unease when it came to the mako company.

Maybe it was because Elmyra had always been so outspoken in her disapproval of them that Aerith mistrusted Shinra so much. That was certainly one of the reasons she was glad she hadn't told her mother about Zack yet. Elmyra would not be happy that her adopted daughter was spending so much time with someone in SOLDIER.

But despite that, Aerith trusted Zack. If there was anything truly sinister about Shinra, she didn't believe he was part of it.

She wasn't looking forward to introducing Zack to Elmyra. But it was something that she guessed would need to happen eventually, especially if Aerith and Zack ended up in a relationship. She couldn't tell if that was realistically part of their future, though. It was hard to tell if Zack was really interested in her that way or if he only wanted to be friends and had just been teasing her about the date.

I wish I knew what he was thinking, she thought wistfully, not for the first time. Life would be so much simpler if she could sense his emotions the same way she could the flowers'. Humans were complicated and confusing.

"I can't come tomorrow," he said, looking thoughtful. "I'll be too busy with work. But maybe the day after? I might have a few hours of free time then, assuming no other crisis pops up." He made an unenthusiastic face.

"Sounds good," Aerith agreed, trying not to over think his use of the word 'crisis'. His light tone made it sound like he was joking. She hoped he was.

"Great," he said, beaming. His whole face lit up whenever he grinned like that.

Aerith felt her heart flutter as she smiled shyly back.

He got to his feet and headed for the door, pausing to look back at her and wave. "See you soon, Aerith!" He still had that effortlessly handsome smile on his face.

"See you," she echoed, watching him go.

The light feeling she got whenever she saw him lingered after she left the church, and she didn't notice that she was still smiling to herself until she got home. Elmyra, who was tidying the kitchen, looked up as Aerith entered, greeted her, and then paused, studying her adopted daughter's expression.

"You look cheerful today, Aerith," she observed.

"I had a good day," the younger girl responded, trying to turn her expression back to its normal, pensive look. She could only squash the smile for a few moments before it snuck back onto her face, brighter than ever.

"Are you seeing someone?" her mother asked.

Aerith had been walking past her to deposit her sweater on the hook by the stairs, but paused at Elmyra's question. "What do you mean?"

Elmyra's hands shifted to her hips as she gave Aerith a look of fond exasperation. She tilted her head to one side. "You know what I mean."

"Not really," she answered. "But I did meet… a friend."

"Is he handsome?" her mother asked.

Without really thinking about it, Aerith nodded.

Elmyra grinned triumphantly. "I knew it!"

"Knew what?" Aerith asked, a little pathetically.

Her mother only shook her head and went back to work, still smiling.

The next time Aerith and Zack met up, they managed to assemble the wagon. It looked far from perfect, but Zack insisted that its slight lopsidedness added character, and Aerith optimistically agreed. The two then opened the cans of paint and set to work brightening their wooden construction with hues of green, blue, and pink.

They sat on either side of the wagon, exchanging small talk as they worked. The flowers hummed peacefully in the background.

"So which flowers are your favorite?" Zack asked.

Aerith thought about it, carefully running the paintbrush along the corner of the wagon. The color, a pale blue, was like a less intense version of Zack's eyes; it was easier to look at than his piercing gaze. "I don't really have a favorite," she responded at last. "I love them all. The more different kinds I have, the better."

To her, the flowers were like children; she couldn't love one more than the others. They each had a slightly different voice in her mind, together forming something like an orchestra of earthen whispers. She didn't want to imagine life without them.

Zack nodded thoughtfully. "What's your favorite color, then?"

"Pink," she answered. "It's a happy color."

"Like your ribbon," he observed, and she nodded, reaching up absentmindedly to touch it. The fabric was soft smooth beneath her fingertips.

"What about you?" she asked. "Which color is your favorite?"

"Green," he responded, grinning in a way that made it impossible to tell whether he was being serious or just teasing her.

"Good thing we bought green paint then," she said, a little helplessly.

She hadn't really been joking, but Zack laughed.

Aerith wasn't sure whether to feel embarrassed or contented. Zack's laughter was a pleasant sound, and it filled her with warmth even when it was at her expense. Even though he teased her, she didn't feel like she was being mocked.

"So what other things do you like to do?" she asked. "Besides tease me?"

She added the second part almost without thinking. It seemed to take Zack by surprise; he just blinked once before he started laughing again.

"I don't mean to pick on you, but… you are fun to tease," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "You're so serious all the time."

"Is that a bad thing?" she asked softly.

"No!" he responded immediately. "Of course not."

Aerith wasn't sure she believed him. Even she wished she could relax sometimes. But she had never really been able to stop worrying, ever since the day Ifalna had died. Pushing her reservations away felt too much like making herself vulnerable.

"How do you do it?" she asked.

Zack had been carefully painting a design on the other side of the wagon but now paused, setting down his brush and looking at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Not worry," she said, and it sounded more like a confession than an explanation. "Out of everyone I've ever met, you're the only one who seems totally carefree. You're so lighthearted and you're always smiling. It's not like you don't have problems—I know you do; I heard you talking about them in your sleep. But you're happy anyway."

He studied her expression and seemed to take note of the haunted weariness in it. "The way I see it," he said slowly, "people always have problems. If you don't find a way to be happy despite those problems, you never will be happy."

For a moment, they just looked at each other.

"It isn't always easy," Zack went on. "In fact, it's almost never easy. But you have to just keep trying, you know? Focus on the good things in your life, however small they might seem next to the huge bad things. Then you'll be happier."

"Do you really believe that?" Aerith asked hopefully.

"Absolutely!" he responded, grinning. He paused for a beat before adding, "Also, keep spending time with me. That'll make you happier, too."

She laughed, and they both went back to painting.

"What's your favorite season?" he asked after some time had passed, returning to the lighthearted exchange of questions they'd been asking one another before.

"Spring," she answered immediately.

"Okay, that was pretty obvious," he conceded. "Mine's summer."

"The warm weather?" she guessed.

"Not even," he admitted. "Freedom from school. I've always disliked hard work."

Aerith raised her eyebrows. "How do you feel about this, then?"

"Oh, this doesn't count," he said dismissively. "This is more like a date."

"Is it?"

"Assuming you want it to be," Zack responded, grinning.

Aerith only blushed, not knowing how to reply to that. Zack always seemed to derive some mischievous enjoyment from leaving her tongue-tied and embarrassed by some offhand comment, which was far too easy for him.

"You're teasing me again," she managed at last.

"Am I?"

"You're impossible," she said, shaking her head.

Zack laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment."

In response, Aerith dipped her fingertips into the surface of the paint and then flicked some at him, making Zack yelp in surprise. Taking him off guard for once was admittedly highly satisfying—at least until he flicked green paint back at her.

Aerith retaliated, and the wagon-painting quickly dissolved into splattering each other with different colors of paint. Within a couple of minutes, though, Aerith ducked away, shielding her bow to avoid getting blue splashed on it. "Truce!"

Thankfully, both of them had put on old T-shirts over their clothing, otherwise Aerith's dress and Zack's SOLDIER uniform would have both been stained.

"You started it," Zack said, but he relented, grinning.

"I know," she said, twisting around to make sure none of the paint had gotten on the edges of her dress, which weren't completely covered by their makeshift smocks. "I just don't want to waste all the paint fooling around with it." She looked back up at Zack and had to stifle a giggle. "You have paint all over your face!"

Zack wiped his face. "I guess you have good aim."

He was able to get off most of it, but there was still a little green smudged on his forehead. "Here, let me get the rest of it off for you," Aerith said, taking the wet rag from him and rubbing at the paint-splattered spot.

He closed his eyes as she did so, and it was only then that Aerith realized she was leaning in close enough that she could count his eyelashes if she wanted to. His lashes were thick and dark, the way she would imagine a crow's down to look.

Flustered by their proximity to one another and the sudden feeling of wanting to close what little distance remained between them, Aerith hastily finished scrubbing the last traces of paint off and withdrew her hand.

Zack opened his eyes, their blueness even more dazzling up close. "Better now?"

Not trusting herself to speak properly, Aerith nodded.

They were still standing close enough to each other that she would barely need to lean in for their lips to touch, if she'd wanted to kiss him.

Do I want to? she asked herself, feeling conflicted.

Despite all the flirtation she'd been on the receiving end of, she'd never kissed anyone before. She hesitated now, unsure of herself, and by the time she'd made up her mind, the moment had passed, Zack expression becoming quizzical instead of earnest. Silently, she handed the rag back to him and pulled away.

They continued painting, but Aerith took on a distracted aura after that, and Zack couldn't get through to her the way he had before.

The text time they met up, they began transplanting the flowers they intended to sell, choosing the ones that were of a medium size. Aerith couldn't help but feel a little guilty at the thought of getting rid of any of her precious blossoms. She'd taken some of them before, but that was different—she had just moved them to her house. She had no way of knowing whether the people who bought the flowers would take care of them or forget to water them and let them wither away. In addition, she wasn't sure whether the flowers would flourish in anyone's homes besides her own.

Theoretically, plants weren't supposed to be able to grow anywhere in Midgar due to the mako reactors which left the soil lifeless. But a few stubborn, rugged plants had always found a way to grow in the church, and once Aerith started visiting them, become healthier and stronger until they eventually blossomed.

The way flowers bloomed everywhere she spent a lot of time was another obvious sign that she was Cetra. But despite her worry that someone would notice and make the connection, Aerith couldn't bring herself to avoid the church. She couldn't bear the thought that without her, the flowerbed would fall back into hopeless disarray.

Zack, thankfully, didn't seem to suspect anything. Perhaps he assumed that the flowers flourished due to the sacredness of the church—and that certainly could have been true of the scraggly plants which had initially grown there. But he had never come there before Aerith had come and her mere presence had transformed the once pitiful scattering of plants into an entire garden.

That didn't stop him from expressing curiosity about it, though.

"Why do the flowers grow here when they can't anywhere else?" he wondered, as he watched Aerith carefully uproot a yellow-flowered plant. "Do you know?"

Aerith's heartbeat sped up in alarm, but she tried not to show it. "When I first came to the church, they were already growing here, but they weren't so healthy," she said, trying to phrase the truth in a way that sounded less obviously supernatural than it had actually been. "But they're survivors. With a little care from me, they began to flourish. Maybe it's something about the soil here."

"Or maybe it's you," Zack said teasingly. "Aerith the flower-whisperer."

Aerith inwardly winced. He didn't know it, but he'd hit the nail on the head. Her attempts to disguise the truth didn't change the fact that the connection was obvious.

"Don't be silly," she said, her voice catching a little.

"I wasn't trying to be," he said, studying her seriously. "There's something about you that's different, besides just your personality. I don't know what it is, but…"

"No." Aerith didn't want to hear it; she had to fight the urge to press her hands against her ears and physically block out his words. "It's the church that's special, not me. I already told you, the plants were growing here before I got here."

"You haven't always lived in Midgar?" Zack asked, letting it go.

"For most of my life, I have," she answered cautiously. "But I came to the slums when I was little. My mother's never liked to explore the city, so we didn't venture as far as this church. I found my way here on my own years later, when I was old enough to explore Midgar by myself." That was all she could say; she couldn't tell him how she'd discovered it, how she'd heard someone—Ifalna's spirit—calling her there.

"I only came here when I joined SOLDIER," Zack said.

"Is it very different from where you're from?" Aerith asked, packing soil into the pot around the flower's roots. She had no way to picture what the outside world might be like, having seen it only in bits and pieces while on the run, and her phobias of the sky and her heritage being noticed stifled any desire she might have to explore. She couldn't help but feel at least a little curious, though.

"Extremely," he answered, remembering. "It's so crowded here… and lifeless."

"Is it really so bad?" she wondered aloud. True, there wasn't any greenery, and the slums were stricken with poverty, but it was home.

"I don't know how you stand it," he admitted.

"Under the plate is the only place I feel secure," she told him, looking resolutely at the flowerpot instead of at him. "Afraid of the sky, remember?"

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. As if he was trying to understand.

Aerith turned abruptly toward him with one of the empty pots. "Are you going to help me with this or not?"

He accepted it, grinning playfully. "I wanted to, but I wasn't sure you would trust me to handle your precious flowers."

"You're allowed to if you're careful," she said, attempting a stern expression.

"I'll do my best to live up to your standards."

"Good. I'll be watching you." She didn't really have to, though. She'd feel it if he started manhandling them.

"Duly noted," he quipped, and got to work.

Aerith put the flower she'd already transplanted in the wagon, and took another of the empty pots. She and Zack worked in companionable silence, with the white noise of the flowers' whispering filling Aerith's ears.

Eventually, after days of preparation, they were ready to start selling flowers.

Zack and Aerith filled the wagon with the flowers they'd transplanted and headed for the shopping area in the central slums.

"Excited?" Zack asked as they guided the cart through the church's arching doors, grinning at her over the top of their creation.

"A little nervous," she admitted.

"That's understandable," he responded, "but don't be. This is it, Aerith! We're going to be rich and we're going to make Midgar a brighter place."

"What if no one buys any flowers?" she asked quietly.

"They will," he said, with not even a tiny shred of her doubt. "Trust me. They're beautiful, and being sold by an even more beautiful girl. Who could resist?"

"I think you're biased," she said faintly, but the confidence in his words did make her feel better. That and the gentle whispering of the flowers, which almost allowed her to forget that she was no longer in the reassuring solitude of the church.

It wasn't much longer before they reached the park in the central slums, which they'd agreed was the best place to attract customers. Now all they had to do was wait.

For a while, she and Zack stood together in silence, watching people walk past. A few passersby glanced curiously over at their wagon, but quickly averted their eyes when Zack or Aerith tried giving them encouraging smiles. While some were interested in the idea of someone selling flowers, they clearly weren't willing to spend their money on decorative items when necessities were difficult enough to afford.

"Nobody's coming…" Aerith said, disappointed.

"Just give it a little more time," Zack encouraged her. "A lot of people will come, you'll see!"

"Hmm… I think it's maybe because the wagon doesn't look very nice," she said, feeling suddenly dissatisfied with its lopsidedness and gaudy paint. It was certainly eye-catching, but not in a good way. Aerith's heart sank.

Just as Zack opened his mouth to object, Aerith looked up from their less-than-impressive creation and saw another person giving their flowers an appraising glance. "Oh, a customer!"

Zack got a determined glint in his eye, and ran over to the man. "Hey, you there! Wanna buy some flowers? 10 gil a pot! That's a special one-day offer! You're not gonna find a better price anywhere!" He gave the man a winning smile, choosing not to bring up the fact that their potential customer wouldn't find flowers anywhere else.

Aerith couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm.

"Aerith," he called excitedly, running back to her. "This customer will buy if you can go down to 5 gil."

"Sure!" she said, brightening. "Any price is fine." After all, sharing their beauty with the rest of the slums was more important to her than making a profit.

"No, we have to be a little more aggressive than that," Zack said decisively. "I'll renegotiate for 7 gil."

"But…" Aerith protested, and then realized that the man had continued on his way without waiting for their response. "The customer just left…"

Zack turned and sighed as he realized she was right. "I'm sorry, Aerith…"

For a moment, Aerith was sorely disappointed by their failure to sell even a single pot of flowers. She'd known that not many people had the extra money to spare, but she hadn't expected so few people to inquire about their sale.

Then Zack's words from a few days ago came floating back to her mind. You have to just keep trying, you know? Focus on the good things in your life, however small they might seem next to the huge bad things. Then you'll be happier.

"Why are you sorry?" she asked, trying to infuse her words with some of Zack's usual optimism. "I'm having such a wonderful time, because you're here with me." She smiled at him, realizing as she spoke that it was the truth.

He looked surprised, then pleased.

"Hey look, Zack!" she said, spotting someone else glance over at them. "Another customer!" This time, she ran over, telling the boy about her mission to fill the city with flowers and her willingness to negotiate over the price.

They went on like that for a while, eventually managing to sell a few of the plants. Aerith wouldn't describe the endeavor as profitable, but even if they'd only sold one, it still would have felt like a success to her.

Then Zack's cell phone rang. Aerith glanced at him as he raised it to his ear, and saw his naturally bright expression fade as he listened to what the person on the other side had to say. He responded briefly, his tone marked by an atypical seriousness, and then slid his phone back into his pocket.

Zack turned to Aerith, and she felt her heart sink, knowing what he was going to say a moment before he did. "I have to go." He took in her worried expression and touched her cheek gently, adding "I'll be careful. Promise."

"Okay," she said faintly, feeling empty as she watched him go and the warmth his fingertips has left on her skin slowly faded away.

It felt wrong continuing on without Zack, so Aerith returned their wagon to the church shortly after he left and then went home.

She had just gotten ready for bed when her phone began to ring. Looking at the screen display, she saw that it was an unfamiliar number calling her. Aerith wasn't sure whether she should answer it or not. There were lots of friendly faces in the slums, but none of them had her cell phone number. Most of the people living here couldn't afford their own personal phones—Elmyra had only bought Aerith one because she knew her daughter often wandered and wanted to be able to contact her if she got worried.

Aerith's hand hovered hesitantly over the phone for a long moment before she picked it up and pressed a button to answer the call. "Hello?"

"Hi, Aerith," said a voice that was more familiar than the number.

"Zack?" she asked tentatively, wondering why he'd called her so late at night.

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm doing okay," he responded, and she could hear the grin in his words, see it in her mind's eye. "In case you were worried."

She laughed, but inwardly felt touched. The tight feeling which had lingered in her chest over the course of the day loosened. "Thank you, Zack."

He chuckled, his laughter light and lovely. "Anytime."

They didn't say much else before ending the call, just exchanged some banter and then wished each other goodnight, but Aerith felt a comfortable warmth in her chest which lasted much longer than the duration of the conversation. It stayed with her as she switched off the lamp on her bedside table and curled up beneath the blankets.

When she fell asleep that night, she didn't have nightmares. She dreamed only of the boy with spiky black hair and mako-blue eyes, his cheek smudged with dirt (and a little bit of green paint) as he sat surrounded by flowers.