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16. Aerith – Evacuee

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Aerith held the scissors in her left hand. She was right-handed, but for some reason left worked best when cutting hair. Her mom's was testament to that once a month, and her knuckles would be white either way.

She wasn't trembling, which was good, but her insides felt like week-old sandwiches scraped into sweaty socks and then hurled into an oil slick. Near-misses would do that to you when you were already tenser than a high-wire.

"You're pretty close to my neck there. Think you can quit trembling long enough not to slice me up?" The words were sarcastic but the tone was gentle.

Aerith took a hank of coppery hair in her hand and hesitated. "You're sure about this?" Her hair was her pride and joy. Even in the filth of the slums she'd taken pains to keep it clean, as if that would separate her from the dead-eyed people who'd already given up all varieties of hope.

"Sure I'm sure. I'm sure squared. Sure cubed."

How could Cissnei joke after … but no, better not to think about that. Aerith hesitated one more time and then made the first cut.

Cissnei was such a wealth of contradictions that sometimes Aerith had no idea what to make of her. Inoffensively placid one moment, a lethal fighter the next, she'd literally seen Cissnei hurl her giant shuriken hard enough to splinter a door off its hinges, and later bumble her way through cooking rice like she'd never had to do anything so simple before. Cissnei gave the impression of a benign nursery assistant, or a helper at a care home. Yet behind her smile lurked knowledge of countless ways to a kill a man using everyday objects, and enough familiarity with espionage to make Aerith question everything she'd ever known about 'administrative research'.

As far as bodyguards went, she wasn't anything like Aerith would've predicted.

Then again, back in Midgar she'd never expected to need one. True, Shinra wasn't exactly acting out of the goodness of their hearts each time they came to recapture her, but somehow Tseng had always worked it so she was given a request she could reasonably decline, rather than orders for a capture she couldn't escape. On the whole, by the time they finally tracked her down to Midgar, then to Sector Five, and realised her biological mother had died, Shinra's interest in Aerith's DNA had waned. With the success of Sephiroth, they had their own perfect set of genes to keep them occupied and were content to leave her alone. Almost as soon as she was rediscovered, Aerith was relegated to being a back-burner project, and happily so, at least until the Nibelheim Incident, and Sephiroth's death, and Zack's disappearance beyond her reach, and how suddenly everything had changed – for all of them.

"Still shaking and getting way too close with those scissors," Cissnei warned. "Shape up, Aerith. The aim is to cut the hair, not the tips off my ears."

Aerith nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She raised the scissors in one hand, a comb in the other, and was about to carry on when Cissnei suddenly stopped and twisted to face her. The back of her head was framed by the cracked vanity mirror, streaked in places where the dye was either in too long or washed out too soon. She'd been wearing a hat since her roots started to show – perfectly acceptable here in the north, where not wearing one made you stand out more.

And they couldn't afford to stand out. Not now, after all these months of successfully staying hidden.

"Focus," Cissnei said, the playfulness gone from her voice. "Stay focussed."

"But -"

"Stay. Focussed."

"But those SOLDIERs -"

"Probably here on an unrelated matter. Shinra wouldn't send two fully-armed SOLDIERs after one girl, even if they knew your location – which, if Tseng has been doing his job right -" Her eyes challenged Aerith to even entertain the idea he hadn't. "- they don't."

But they might send SOLDIERs after a veteran Turk. Bizarre as it was to think of Cissnei as a veteran anything. She was cagey about her life and her past, but Aerith put her age as not too far above her own. That could be wrong, though. Cissnei had one of those faces that looked young except for her eyes. The other sure-fire way to tell a person's age was by the state of their hands, and Cissnei's were covered by fingerless leather gloves she rarely, if ever, took off.

Aerith kept her own counsel about all of that, though. She kept her own counsel about a lot of things. Cissnei wasn't into girly chats and sharing secrets. It might have been because she was a Turk, or it might have been just the way she was. She was so hard to read. Aerith had to just trust that what she told her was true, and that Tseng had also been telling the truth when he said the best thing she could do now was leave Midgar and not look back. He'd only let her say goodbye to her mom because she begged, and Aerith got the feeling that level of compassion was unprecedented for him.

Aerith didn't know the details, but apparently Tseng's advice had come just from him, not his superiors, which meant if she was caught it wasn't just her own neck on the line. Why he was taking such a risk on her behalf, she didn't know, and Tseng refused to elaborate on the reasons why. Surely he, as an employee of Shinra, was obliged to keep her close by. Yet Shinra wasn't looking for a missing Turk or a missing ex-specimen. If Cissnei's grudging bits of information were correct, Shinra thought all their Turks were safely ensconced on missions, didn't even realise Aerith had left Midgar, and would leave them both in peace as long as this remained true.

Cissnei's eyes were still trained on her. Cissnei found it easy to maintain her focus, but Aerith was antsy. She couldn't move again. She couldn't. They hadn't quite been on the run all these months, but they'd changed location so many times that was as good a label as any. This village had been their longest port, and Aerith was too weary to move again, but too scared to stay put with SOLDIERs around.

Not for the first time, she wished Zack was here. He always made her feel safe – protected, like nothing could ever hurt her again. Even the threat of Shinra had always seemed less when he was around – absurd when you considered he was a SOLDIER and worked for the people who had made her first seven years a living nightmare. Zack was Zack, though, not just Shinra's puppet. Despite General Sephiroth being much more famous and highly regarded, Aerith thought Zack deserved the most respect of all the First Classes. Zack, at least, had never allowed Shinra to ruin him or his honour, and had held fast to his integrity no matter what the company ordered him to do.

Aerith had very clear memories of that time in the church, when Zack had stayed for hours but said only one thing into her shoulder when she hugged him from behind.

"Angeal," he had whispered, and she remembered the smell of cordite and other things in his hair, the fresh crisscross cut on his cheek, and the way his body shuddered as the heartache inside him boiled up and out. "Angeal …"

Apart from that he had just sobbed, deeply and regretfully. She'd wrapped her arms around him because she couldn't think what else to do to ease the loneliness that rolled off him in waves. It had scared her, because until that moment Zack had always seemed unconquerable. Grief, however, had overpowered him where nothing else could. From that day forward she'd seen him in a different light – a gentler, more human light that didn't just compare him with other SOLDIERs, but with regular people as well.

She could still feel him sometimes – the green sea of the Lifestream was a constant background hum in her mind, but through it glinted a thin silver wire that connected her to each of her loved ones. She could feel her mom back in Midgar, too, and the strength of that bond threw the waning one with Zack into sharp relief. It had been getting harder unless she concentrated. When she and Cissnei were deep in the south she'd barely been able to feel his presence at all. It was easier in the north; although maybe that was more to do with her natural inability to cope with high temperatures, rather than the distance between them. She'd always marvelled when Zack told her about his childhood in Gongaga, and how hot it was there. Stories of cooking eggs on bare rocks, of heat haze causing mirages, and of never daring to go barefoot in case you lost a layer of skin always captured her imagination.

As if reading her thoughts, Cissnei suddenly said, "Tell me about Zack."

"What?"

"While you're cutting my hair. Tell me about him. Let that SOLDIER take up your thoughts instead of the sub-par versions outside."

Outside the wind was blowing a gale and the snow was flying almost horizontal. It was unlikely either Third Class Atogama or Third Class Atosugi was out there, but Aerith understood what Cissnei meant. And maybe it would be nice to talk about Zack. They rarely brought him up, even though Aerith knew he and Cissnei had known each other and worked together several times. Zack had talked about her, though Aerith hadn't known the Turk tailing her after his disappearance was the infamous Cissnei. She hadn't realised the woman's identity until Tseng introduced them, and said Cissnei would be taking her away from Midgar, keeping her safe until it was okay to come back – if it ever could be, according to his personal measures, which nobody else could really follow.

Cissnei turned around, hands cupping her elbows. She did that a lot, as if she was cold. She'd even done it in the south, when the sweat ran down Aerith's back and she'd stupidly asked whether Cissnei was pleased she didn't have to wear a dark suit in such weather. Cissnei had just stared at her and then turned away, leaving Aerith with the sense she'd been judged and found wanting.

Aerith began to comb up locks of hair and snip them. "He was … always kind," she said haltingly, summoning Zack in her mind and wondering which bit of his personality to describe first. "Very kind," she said, "but also strong. He was probably the strongest man I've ever known …"

After a while of her talking Cissnei interrupted. "Did he ever regret joining SOLDIER?"

Aerith was puzzled. She'd just been getting into her stride, the words beginning to flow more easily after keeping Zack locked away in her memories for months. "He never said so."

"But you think he did?"

Aerith bit her lip. "How well did you know him?"

"How well does anyone know anyone in Shinra?" Cissnei replied cryptically.

"Once," Aerith admitted at last. "I think he regretted it – genuinely wished he'd never joined, I mean – one time."

"When Angeal died," Cissnei said with conviction, as if she'd just been waiting for Aerith to say it. Once again Aerith got the feeling of being assessed against some unknown criteria.

"You know about that?"

"It's a well-documented fact if your business is information pertaining to Shinra."

Aerith looked at the crown of Cissnei's head, with its wildly sprouting tufts of auburn and streaky bottle-blonde. "He killed him, didn't he?"

"He never told you?"

"Zack was … he didn't like to talk about work things. I think sometimes he came to see me to forget for a while."

Cissnei snorted. Just a little snort, but Aerith heard it. "That'd be right. And yes, Zack killed Angeal Hewley, the First Class SOLDIER who was his mentor. It was after several incidents that I can't go into, but basically Shinra had put a shoot-on-sight order on Hewley and Zack was the one who found him. Zack himself provided details of the confrontation, but it seems Hewley attacked him and Zack had to defend himself, which resulted in Hewley's death." Her tone snapped back on itself like an elastic band, switching from business-like to almost gentle. "It screwed up Zack's head for a while. By all accounts he and Hewley had one of the best mentor-pupil relationships in all of Shinra. Zack respected Hewley enormously and already had a disinclination to kill, even in the line of duty."

"I know," Aerith nodded, thinking again of that evening in the church, holding tight to him as if he might break apart and the pieces go fluttering away in different directions if she let go. He had eventually recovered from what happened, but after that there had always been something broken inside Zack that not even the strongest healer in the world could fix.

Cissnei went on pensively, "He was always so reluctant to take a life. It made a mockery of the SOLDIER programme, to have someone like Zack as one of its premier success stories."

"He isn't a killer," said Aerith. "He has killed, but he isn't a killer."

She could see Cissnei's eyes sliding sideways, trying to focus on the face behind her without turning her head and potentially losing the wrong chunk of hair. "There's a difference?"

"Of course there is."

"What is it?"

Aerith considered her reply. "Intent. Enjoyment. Motivation. All three of those, I guess."

"So if you really mean it, get a kick out of it, or do it for personal gain you're a cold-blooded murdering bastard?"

"No, but … look, it's not that simple."

Cissnei's expression remained impassive, but she muttered something that sounded like, "Tell me about it."

"Taking lives is serious. It's something you carry with you for the rest of your own. That kind of permanence … it's like scarring yourself. Even if you kill accidentally, or in self-defence, you're still going to carry the memory of that person and what you did to them. You're still responsible, and you have to live everyday with the weight of that responsibility. A killer is someone who can carry all that around and … not think about it, I suppose. Not care. Definitely not regret."

"Except that there's a flaw in that logic. By your reasoning, people who premeditate or kill for a living are this special 'killer' thing. They have to not think about it, or they'd go insane. Trust me on that one."

"I suppose …" Aerith suddenly realised what she was saying and who she was saying it to. A flush rose into her cheeks. She ran her fingers through a tuft of hair before snipping slowly, a few strands at a time, as if her entire attention was taken up with the task. "But Zack isn't a killer."

"How so?"

"Because …" She trailed off.

"Explain it to me, Aerith. He was a SOLDIER. Ergo, he was a killer."

"He isn't a killer," Aerith said emphatically.

Cissnei paused before answering, "All right. Is."

"You're wrong."

"If I am, I'm not seeing it. What makes Zack so different from any guy with a sword who goes around carving up people?"

"Because …" Aerith fumbled, trying to put it into words. How to characterise the way she knew Zack wasn't just another killer like other Shinra drones? She couldn't tell Cissnei the more abstruse side of things: how nobody who touched her like Zack, who opened himself so completely and left nothing out, even the things that made him most vulnerable, could be a cold-blooded murderer. She knew instinctively that Cissnei wasn't the type of person to put a lot of credence in romantic foolishness.

With Zack, Aerith had always felt like she could let go of her inhibitions and he wouldn't judge her. He peeled away the surface layers of people to get at the heart underneath. He made you feel like he'd created a special place inside, just for you, where you'd always be safe because he'd never let go of the piece of yourself that you gave him to look after and put there.

"He carries it all inside him, every day," Aerith said, still in the same insistent tone. "All of them, each person he ever had to … while he was in Midgar, at least, the times I could see him … he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn't just living for himself. He found the fun in everything; never let anything get him down, because he knew his life wasn't just for him anymore. He had to smile. He had to be positive, no matter how much it hurt, or how much he lost. He had to go on living for each life he'd taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would've been a … a betrayal."

"A betrayal?" Cissnei echoed.

"Of their deaths. Of everything he'd forced them to give up. All their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …" Aerith stopped. Her breath caught. "His life is their legacy. Their living legacy," she added, pouring as much certainty into the word as she could. Zack was alive. No matter how thin or hard to find that silver thread may become, she couldn't ever let herself believe any different. "They live through him. That's the difference between someone like Zack and a killer. Friend, enemy, bystander – it doesn't matter which side they're on, just that he makes sure they go on living by bothering to remember them. He owes it to them to make sure they aren't forgotten."

Cissnei said nothing. Neither of them did for a long time. Aerith went on, trimming here, snipping there, combing through her work meticulously even though it was awkward for her to reach and her arms were beginning to ache. By the time she stepped back and sat gratefully down on the bed, enough time had passed that she felt comfortable speaking again.

Cissnei, however, cut her off before she could say a word. "Turks and SOLDIERs have never really gotten along," she said simply. "In-house rivalry, plus a bad mix of personalities. Zack, though … he got on with everyone. It didn't matter whether they were SOLDIER, infantryman, Turk, management, or just a valet or caterer at one of those bigwig parties President Shinra always threw. Throws. Whatever. Zack was friendly with everyone, and because of the way he was with them, everybody was always friendly back, like they couldn't help it. He just had that way about him."

Aerith nodded.

"You felt like … you could trust him not just with your life." Cissnei frowned. "Turks trust each other with their lives all the time. SOLDIERs too. But you felt like you could trust Zack with more than that."

"Like what?"

Her frown deepened. With her new short haircut, she looked a lot older. The pinched look to her face added years, and the frown made them difficult ones. "Like your secrets," she said at length, grudgingly, almost bitterly, as if she wanted to know how he dared to be so presumptuous.

It was the most candid she had ever been with Aerith in all the months they'd spent together. Cissnei knew Aerith's biggest secret about Zack, and now Aerith knew hers too.

Because in a blinding flash of inspiration, Aerith understood: Cissnei was in love with him, too, even with all the baggage and problems that now brought. Suddenly a lot of things made sense – about Cissnei, about Zack, and about this expedition they were now on. Things slotted into place in Aerith's head, including the knowledge that for all the major differences in their personalities, Cissnei was actually just like Zack. Aerith had seen her stiffen when she described how Zack carried the memories of others inside him and kept them from dying completely. Cissnei did the same. Maybe she had never realised before what that meant about her nature as a self-defined 'killer', but Aerith could tell she'd been doing it for a long time; extending the lives of her victims by prolonging the memories of them in the world.

"Zack made you feel like you could be more than you think you are," Aerith said softly. "Like maybe … it's all right to want more. To think you deserve it when everything else has made you think you should just shut up and be grateful for what you already have."

Cissnei said nothing. She said it very loudly, though.

The first tear rolled down Aerith's cheek and dripped off her jaw. The second headed for the crease of her nose, so when she sniffed it went up her nostril and made her cough. Cissnei turned around, a confused and then panicked look in her eyes as she was drawn out of the thoughts occupying her mind.

"Shinra killed my father," Aerith said thickly. "My mother too, in a roundabout way. I never knew him. He died when I was only a few days old. But my mother … I remember her and … they took her from me, piece by piece, when I was just a kid. I was still … still a child, and they … to me and … since I was a baby, but to her they were worse … she tried to … to protect me while we were in the labs, but … and then all of a sudden she broke us out, and ran, and she made sure I'd be okay, but then she died and … and I've never said it, not to anyone, but I miss her. Gaia, I miss her so much sometimes it hurts. I've been without her longer than I was with her, and I love my mom, but my mother – my real mother – she … I still … I was only seven. Nobody expects you to remember pain from when you were seven. And the whole Ancient thing … the thing that got her killed … makes me different. I'm not supposed to have human frailties. Having Cetra genes means … but I hate it. I hate that I was born this way. I hate that my choices have always been to hide or be in pain at someone else's hands. I hate eking out an existence and never feeling like I'm allowed to reach for more, or to try and make my mom's life easier, because who and what I am means keeping a low profile …

"But Zack, he was different. Even though he was SOLDIER, I never felt like I was risking everything I'd built … everything I'd clawed back that Shinra took from me … I never felt like I was risking that when I was with him. A SOLDIER could have destroyed it all for me, but not Zack. He'd never … But now he's gone, and we've been running all this time without even talking about him, even though it's obvious … but I can't anymore. I need to … I can't …" She sucked in a breath. "I've never been so scared of anything in all my life." She raised reddened eyes to Cissnei and whispered, "Not just the obvious. Not just the future. The present, right now, for him."

"What are you saying?" Cissnei asked hoarsely.

"I've felt things. In my dreams. He's in pain, and I can't help him. I can't do anything. Like my mother couldn't do anything for me when they separated us and the researchers … If this is how she felt, I can understand why she threw everything away for herself just to make sure I had a chance. Because if I could take away Zack's pain right now, I'd do it. I'd do it in a second, no matter what it meant for me. And that terrifies me, because I'm not meant to be thinking of myself and how I feel anymore, I'm meant to be thinking of … I have to … but that man … that man …"

"Zack?"

Aerith shook her head. It was all coming out now; clogging in the exits, surfacing piece by painful, hidden piece. "I know … I know the man who took my father and mother away is involved somehow, and that terrifies me more than any of -" She gestured around, at the inside of the chalet they'd rented, at the threadbare furniture, at Cissnei and herself and the differences between them. "- this."

Cissnei stared at her. Things shifted behind her eyes, but her expression remained blank, as if her facial muscles had short-circuited and shut down while they waited for new instructions about what they were supposed to display. "I won't let anything happen to you," she said eventually.

It wasn't remotely what Aerith wanted to hear.

She'd never been so heartbreakingly lonely in her life.

She put her face in her hands and wept, while Cissnei looked on and twitched her fingers like her body wanted to move, but the rest of her had no idea of the appropriate response.

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To Be Continued

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