Chapter 2. 1987-1992

The lights, the sky.

They might have been beautiful, but…

"We live in luxurious captivity," her mother once told her. They were high in the building, floor sixty-something – Aerith could never remember, because except for going back and forth to the lab, she never was let out. It was a large, well furnished apartment, with a view of Midgar – but every time she looked outside, she could remember the same skies viewed from the lab, and that awful feeling that came in the pit of her stomach whenever she saw those skies, waiting for them to bring her mother back.

They never hurt her, but they were hurting her mom. Not all the time. Her mom tried to tell her they didn't, but she saw her mother's face when they came to "borrow" her for a little while – and she heard her mother crying later those nights.

Aerith's room was big, but her mother's was bigger. Her mother told her she had been born in a very small house, but she wished they were back there.

"Why?" Aerith demanded.

"Because we were together," Ifalna replied.

By "together" Aerith knew that meant "with your father", but she knew it was smart not to ask more. She had heard some of the scientists talking about "the child's father" and sometimes the name "Gast". So that must be my father, she realized, and asked her mother about it.

Ifalna was sad. "It's best for them to know as little as possible," she told Aerith. "I've been trying to keep it that way."

But she told Aerith stories. Stories of the magical Promised Land, far away, and every time Ifalna told the story, the Promised Land looked different. That confused Aerith.

"So where is it really?" Aerith asked.

Ifalna pulled her daughter into a tight hug, kissing the top of her head gently. "That's the thing," she told her daughter. "No one knows for sure. All we know is, that it is a land of supreme joy and happiness. Someday, we all have to find our own Promised Land. One day, I want you to leave Midgar… and find your own."

Aerith was worried. "Leave Midgar? Does that mean I would have to leave you, too?" She was worried about being without her mother, but she was also worried about her mother being here, alone, with those men and women who hurt her.

"We'll leave before then, I promise," Ifalna replied. "I'm most scared of what might happen once you become a woman…" Forced breeding had only been whispered in the corridors; it was something Ifalna didn't truly worry she might have to face. It was something simpler, more fundamental – Aerith was so far left alone because she appeared to have so little power, and that was all that mattered to ShinRa. What might they do to her daughter once she grew up and her power truly began to manifest?

Truly, she didn't know what ShinRa might want to do. She'd seen Sephiroth in the corridors, and thought of what Gast had told her, the experiments that had left him disillusioned and running to the farthest poles of Gaia - where he met a lonely woman, the last of her race, pleased to find happiness by chance in a place so remote… until the day ShinRa came to take that from her, along with their rogue scientist's life.

Sephiroth… what kind of woman could allow her child to be experimented on that way? What kind of father… then again, if the father was truly Hojo as Gast had explained, then she suspected there was no end to what the madman would do, even to his own flash and blood.

She couldn't imagine he would have many qualms with Aerith.

Would Hojo go as far as trying to father a child on she herself…? Ifalna shivered with the very thought of his creepy fingers on her... she drove the memory away with remembrance of her beloved Gast's touch instead. And the child he had given her, all that was left of him. "Someday, Aerith, you will leave these walls, and someday you will leave Midgar. I pray to the Planet you will find happiness somewhere. Have children of your own."

Aerith only looked up at her. "A child? Me? But how?"

"Hopefully, with someone you love. Like I loved your father." Aerith had been so small when they were taken, that even the idea that she had a father was a bare abstraction to her. "Never forget that, Aerith – you were a child of true love. And you are my daughter, always. Nothing would ever change that." Not even the distance of death truly separates love. Gast, I miss you so much…

She couldn't bear to tell Aerith the truth - that her only hope was to get her daughter as far away from here as possible. They had afflicted her with mako dependency – she knew she couldn't make it far. Once away from the confines of the lab, she would steadily weaken, and then –

But she knew it wouldn't stop her taking her chances when the time came.

They gave her all sorts of toys, but the only ones she asked for, were the ones they couldn't bring her. She asked for flowers. She had seen them in one of her books. But the ones they brought her… they weren't alive. They were some manufactured things.

"I want alive ones," she insisted, stamping her foot.

"Flowers can't grow in Midgar," she was told.

When she got older, she was allowed to explore a little more. Some of the other floors. She saw more pretend flowers, pretend trees, and the employees relaxed under them, pretending they were the real thing.

Mostly, she liked to talk. To everyone, the secretaries, the mechanics, even the janitors. She went all the way down to the 60th floor, but she could never get below that.

"It's so ordinary employees can't come up," she was told.

"But I can't go down either," she objected.

Even the soldiers, she talked to. Some were mean, but others were nice. One of them even brought her a special present.

"It's flower seeds," he told her.

"So, I can grow flowers?" she asked him.

"No, not up here. You'll have to wait until you find a better place."

She never knew his name; she never knew what happened to him. All the soldiers went off on missions and things, eventually. But she never forgot him, and she always kept her flower seeds.

The Turks were the scariest. Some of them were even named after weapons. How was she supposed to call someone "Knife" or "Gun"? But even some of those talked to her.

One of them started showing up more and more. He was one of the ones with a real name. His name was Tseng.