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Cloud woke first, late in the following morning. Aerith was safely cocooned in his arm, her dress from yesterday rumpled and littered with suspicious little crinkles or patches of crunchy…..stuff. Cloud, himself, was still dressed in the clothes he had worn yesterday, and for a moment he was entirely disoriented before the memories came crashing down onto him with all the force of a hurricane.
Cloud jerked a little in surprise but quickly stilled when Aerith mumbled in her sleep. It seemed as if all of Gaia held its breath for a moment as the girl's brows contracted and her lips drew together in a pronounced pout; but eventually Aerith murmured something too garbled to make sense of and snuggled further into Cloud's embrace before settling back into sleep. Once he was certain she was resting peacefully once more, Cloud twisted just enough to be able to pet her hair with his hand.
Partly out of the genuine need for comfort, but mostly to distract himself from his pressing need for a toilet, closely followed by the intense desire to drink an ocean's worth of water as soon as possible.
Cloud wasn't sure how long he sat there, petting Aerith's hair and trying to keep himself distracted from his body's needs and the events of the day before- or at least, Cloud hoped it was only the day before- but eventually Aerith began to wake.
And then she sleepily elbowed him in the lower abdomen.
"Careful Aer, I have to take a leak so badly I might explode." Cloud gasped as he wriggled away from her. When she elbowed him again, Cloud yelped. "Aerith, I swear to Gaia I will wet the bed like a baby if you don't stop that!"
Aerith pulled back, sitting up onto her knees, and blinked slowly before rubbing her eyes with her fists. "Cloudy?" She murmured sleepily for a moment before her eyes snapped open and she squawked in alarm, hastily untangling herself from the blankets- she nearly strangled herself in her haste- and bolted for the door. "Sorry Cloudy, but I've really gotta go!"
Cloud was mildly confused until he heard the door next door slam shut and he realized that Aerith had just stolen the bathroom from him.
"Brat!" He called after her.
"You love me anyways!" She called back cheerfully, though there was a hesitancy that he didn't like in her voice.
Time to fix that. "Yeah, yeah I do." Cloud paused for a moment then added wryly. "As long as you hurry it up and don't spend days in there!"
"Ha~!" Aerith called back, all good cheer and effusive warmth, and Cloud relaxed a little as he waited for her to finish.
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Cloud wiped his hand on a rag and looked over his newest project with a keen eye.
After his 'episode'- Aerith's words, not his- about a week ago Cloud had needed a project to work on to center himself before he could really get back into the swing of things regarding the flower playgrounds. Towards that end he and Aerith had decided to repurpose the shack across from the church to be Cloud's workshop-slash-project hub. The word 'shack' was truly the only word Cloud or Aerith could think to describe the rusty building made out of tin and held together by nothing less than the grace of the goddess.
There had been a few monsters they had needed to clear out, naturally. Cloud actually finished off the first monster- a Hedgehog Pie- when he tripped over some debris and knocked one of the haphazard ceiling plates loose. The loose metal had unexpectedly dropped down and severed the menaces' head.
After that, Aerith had been entirely entertained by the seemingly never-ending flow of Whole Eaters. It seemed no matter how many of the things she and Cloud took out; three more were waiting to take their place!
"It's like they didn't have anything better to do than breed." She huffed in amusement as she dexterously twirled her staff to fling off some of the monster remains and charged the Lightning Materia Cloud had bought for her during their 'day after' shopping spree.
"Less talking, more frying please." Cloud grunted as he ducked around another pair, taking out the first with a deft twist of one of Jonesy's trench knives and scoring a deep blow against the newly dead monster's partner.
"Fire in the hole!" Aerith bellowed cheerfully, causing Cloud to yelp and duck just as Aerith's spell washed over the area, taking out three of the things, including the one Cloud had wounded.
"A little more warning next time!" Cloud called back to his friend as he smelled the scent of burning hair. "And if you make me bald I will never forgive you!"
"Ah, have a little faith Cloudy!" Aerith rejoined, still entirely cheerful as she whacked yet another monster with her staff. "I'd still love you! Besides-" Aerith paused as she nimbly hopped over some debris before she returned to gleefully bashing in monster skulls. "-I'd buy you a wig made out of chocobo feathers! No one would ever know the difference!"
Cloud groaned. Loudly. "You're a menace, Aer." He informed her as he paused at a pile of scrap metal, debating the wisdom of just kicking it all over.
"I know, isn't it great?"
It had taken them most of the morning- it was Cloud's odd job off day- but by the time the nightlife lights flickered on they were confident that they had successfully cleared out all the unwanted tenants of their 'new' building. Most of the afternoon had been spent organizing piles of the scrap metal and other miscellaneous things. A task that would have taken a fair bit longer had Cloud not given into Aerith's nagging and hired a few of the Slum men she knew from her trips to Wall Market to assist.
"What are you going to do with all of this month's 'Ma money', Cloudy?" Aerith asked, hands on her hips and a stubborn frown on her lips. "You gonna give it to her in person? Or send it all to her when she goes back to Nibelheim? Your Ma's coming Cloudy and I'll tell on you if you try to do all of this heavy lifting by your stubborn self!"
Seeing all they accomplished at the end of the eight hours that he had hired the men for, Cloud could admit- to himself- that Aerith might have a point. There really was not any shame in hiring some help, even if it chafed on his pride a bit because he felt like he should not have to do such things and wouldn't have to, if not for his own foolhardiness.
Aerith must have caught on to his mental grumblings because she laughed and gave him a hug. A smug hug.
Cloud blew a raspberry against her cheek in retaliation. The fact that it made her squeak and scrub his spit off her cheek was merely a bonus. He felt very vindicated.
Well, until Aerith pounced on his back and insisted he carry her back to her house piggy-back style.
A few more days of work- and a few more shifts of help, as much as such a thing still made Cloud grit his teeth- and the roof was reasonably repaired. Repaired as in stable enough to walk on. Which naturally meant that Aerith was plotting out flower beds.
Cloud had been rather mystified to discover that his morning odd jobs netted him more money than he spent on labor in the afternoons. He truly had not realized just how much gil he had actually been earning.
Aerith giggled at his dumbfounded expression.
"It's really not that surprising Cloudy." She informed him once she managed to wrestle her giggles under control. They were in the church, enjoying the tea that Elmyra had sent with them when they had left Aerith's house after lunch- Cloud and Aerith were attempting to spend at least lunch with the irreplaceable Mrs. Gainsborough- when Cloud had blurted out his newest revelation to his best friend. "I mean, most of the things that people hire you to do would be really costly for them otherwise. You have a knack for fixing seemingly unfixable things and it shows."
"Yeah, but I'm just doing what Ma taught me." Cloud grumbled. "When something broke we had to make it work- especially in the dead of winter. How is that any different from living in the Slums?"
"The difference in the Slums is that people know they can just buy something different." Aerith pointed out as she dusted herself off and moved towards her newest patch of flowers. Nearly the entire left side of the church was blooming by now as Aerith painstakingly cultivated it in small sections. "You and your Ma didn't have that cushion and it shows in how you troubleshoot and don't give up easily. Of course, I think you have a bit of a natural talent for such things, as even the more flexible people around here call on your expertise."
"It's still weird." Cloud had mumbled as he rose, dusted himself off, and headed across the street.
Aerith just giggled at her swaying flowers. She almost swore they were giggling, too.
Cloud shuffled over to one of the neat piles of scrap and began to search through it for what he needed. The plans on the table were for a fan, as the air in the sunlight shaft areas where the playground was supposed to be built was heavy enough to smother a Nibel dragon, let alone a child. Or flowers, for that matter, no matter how amazing Aerith was.
There was also the fact that hot air rose above cool air to consider, but Cloud knew from his Shinra days that the Plate was designed in such a way that it actually forced the warmer air back down. That was why the upper staircases and the rooftops were actually cooler than the Slum streets. The physics of the phenomena made Cloud's head hurt- and he was certain that if such a thing occurred anywhere else there would be abnormal weather occurrences- but the fact was the air of the Slums was heavy. To cope Cloud planned to repurpose what was once a home's fireplace- the house had long since been looted and trashed- and pull air through it via a series of fans.
Cloud hoped his plan worked.
The thought was not to really cool the air, but to make it move. Cloud firmly believed that if the air of the Slums could just move enough it would grow exponentially cooler simply by no longer being stagnate. The curve and pitch of the Plate forced the hottest of the air down the latticework of rigid air ducts and returned the majority of the hot, heavy air to the lower area of the Slums. An issue exacerbated by the heat of the Mako Reactors. Admittedly the vents for the Reactors sent a good chunk of their incidental heat through a system of ducts that vented out into the Wastes. Cloud firmly believed, though, that if he could just get enough air moving then the air at the street-level would grow cooler, and therefore denser. Enough cool air gathering at the bottom and the air ducts would be unable to force the hot air the incorrect direction and the Slums would benefit.
Part of the reason Cloud knew that much was because one of his former squad mates- Sergeant Trembly, actually- had not only spent a good eight years in the Engineering Corps, but the man had been one of the engineers that had worked on the Plate's design. Cloud knew that the Slums were supposed to have vents that brought in fresh air near the street level but those vents had never even been properly started on due to budget crunching. However, the latticework of ducts that would keep the Plate from being weakened by constant exposure of heat from both sides- the Slums hosting the heat-intensive parts of the Mako Reactors and the Upper Plate having the elements to contend with- had been installed during the first part of the construction.
So Cloud knew that the Plate would be fine.
Cloud just hoped he could get Trembly's self-sustaining magnet motor to work properly. Trembly had built several prototypes and Cloud had helped with the last couple of them, so he knew what he needed he just was not entirely sure that he could built the damn thing without Trembly standing over his shoulder. Because the last motor that they had made had worked just fine, no issues with overheating or surging or anything. Cloud was pretty sure it had been sent to Trembly's wife with the rest of his Sergeant's things. But Cloud wanted to make Trembly's invention work, not just for his project, but because Trembly had always felt shame for his part in the designing of the Plate.
Cloud felt that his Sergeant would rest a little easier in the Lifestream knowing that Cloud had managed to alleviate some of the Slum denizens' suffering with the motor that the man had designed.
To make all of his grand plans happen, though, Cloud needed to rig up a torch or a smithy or both.
"Cloud!" A familiar and much missed voice called from the doorway, causing the blond to drop the metal he was holding and whirl around in surprise.
"M-Ma?"
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Feel free to leave me a note on your way out~!
(And extra hugs to all of you! I totally appreciate all your awesome feedback~! *hugs*)
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