It was the early hours of the morning when Doctor Sheiran finally finished working on Aerith. Everyone had ended up falling asleep, except for Cloud, who had been too worried to sleep, afraid that something might happen if he dared to close his eyes.
"How is she?" he asks as he saw the doctor, immediately standing and rousing everyone from their deep slumber.
"Well, it was very touch and go for a while, but I am confident that she will make a full recovery," he explains with a sigh, having something else on his mind.
"What is it?" Tifa asks, noticing that the doctor seemed troubled and wanted to say something else.
"Once I was able to see the full extent of her injuries, she shouldn't have lived. She shouldn't have even been able to make it here; she'd have bled out."
"Aerith is an ancient, the last one in existence," Red says, speaking up first among the group.
"Yes, perhaps that has something to do with her survival. I'm running some tests just to make sure that there's nothing else to be concerned about."
"Can we see her?" Cloud asks, not waiting for an answer as he walked by the doctor and headed to Aerith's curtained off room.
Aerith was lying in bed wearing a white gown and a white blanket covering her small frame. Some of her color had finally returned to her, finally seeming to recover from the blood loss she had sustained. In the corner of the room draped over a wooden chair was Aerith's light pink dress soaked in her blood. Cloud pulled up another chair and sat down, taking Aerith's hand in his own, barely looking up as Tifa and Barret entered.
"Man, when I get my hands on Sephiroth, I swear," Barret says, clenching his fist as he saw how vulnerable Aerith was in the bed.
"Sephiroth doesn't matter right now. The important thing is Aerith." Tifa says, putting a hand on Barret's arm.
"She's right. Sephiroth doesn't matter right now. Aerith does." Cloud says as he looked up at them finally to see that two members of their group were unaccounted for, "where are Red and Yuffie?"
"They went to update Cid and Vincent on Aerith," Tifa says, going over to the chair with Aerith's dress and looking it over, "I'm going to see if I can fix her dress. It'll be a good distraction."
"Goodluck with that," Barret says, nodding to Tifa as she took the bloodied dress and left.
Cloud lifted a free hand and brushed a strand of hair out of Aerith's face.
"Who knew you actually cared about anyone besides yourself," Barret says, pulling up the chair that originally had the dress on it and sitting on Aerith's other side.
"I'm not heartless," the merc says dryly, trying his best not to show offence to Barret's comment, not even looking up at him.
"I know. All I'm saying is that it's different."
Cloud shrugged, not taking his attention away from Aerith, just wanting her to wake up and be okay again, barely even noticing that Red and Yuffie had come back.
"We're back! We had to tell Cid and Vincent about Aerith!"
"Yes, and Cid told us to find a hotel to stay in for Aerith's recovery. He recommends a hotel at the gold saucer, so she doesn't have to travel far,"
"Alright, let's get some rooms. You coming, Cloud?" Barret asks, getting up from his seat and looking across the bed at Cloud.
"I'm not leaving her," he says, still not looking away from the cetra, causing Barret to nod and going to leave with Red and Yuffie, "if Tifa comes back, I'll tell her where you went,"
Barret nodded and finally left with their other two companions and leaving Cloud alone.
Tifa was desperately asking the people of Corel if they had any supplies to spare for her to fix Aerith's dress only to either be ignored, insulted, or even spit at from everyone who knew that she had come there with Barret. Tifa stood in the middle of the dirt path between some houses feeling defeated after what seemed like the millionth person turned her down. All she wanted was to fix Aerith's dress for her since she knew it was her friends favorite dress and she'd be sad to have to part with it.
"Hey Tifa, we're going up to the hotel at the gold saucer to get a room. We're going to be around for awhile while Aerith recovers," Barret says as he saw Tifa, who put on a faint smile at him so that he wouldn't know that she was struggling with her task.
"That sounds good. I'm going to fix the dress or get supplies for it and then I'll meet you there,"
Barret nodded, walking past Tifa with Yuffie and Red and Tifa just sighed, her chest feeling heavy and tight as tears threatened to fall.
What am I going to do? She thought to herself, looking at the blood soaked, ripped dress in her hands and looking around.
"Hey you there!"
Tifa jumped and spun around towards the voice to see an old woman looking at her suspiciously from the doorway to one of the houses that she was in front of. The old woman beckoned Tifa over to her, which Tifa hesitantly closed the distance.
"Yes?" She asks, finally speaking as she and the old woman stared at each other. Tifa looked the olive-skinned woman up and down, avoiding the old woman's steely gaze, the normally confident woman suddenly feeling like a shy little kid.
"What do you have there? You came here with that Barret fellow right?"
"Yeah, our friend got really hurt and Doctor Sheiran is fixing her up now. This was the dress she was wearing, and I can fix it, I just need some sewing supplies to borrow and something to help get the blood out?" she asks, finally looking into the old woman's green eyes.
"Follow me…" The old woman starts, looking Tifa up and down as she was prompting Tifa for her name.
"Tifa,"
"Tifa, I'm Marie. Follow me and I'll do this for you."
"Oh, that's not necessary, I can if I just_"
"I insist," the woman says, cutting Tifa off as she led her inside the small house.
Tifa looked around, taking note of the barren white walls on the inside, the only color in the house being a bouquet of yellow lilies.
"Those are my friend's favorite flower," she states, nodding to the bouquet in the glass vase on the circular wooden table.
"Yes, my grand daughter picked them for me a couple days ago,"
Tifa nodded, waiting for the woman to direct her to a place to go but took the dress instead bringing it over to the kitchen and placing it on the table and opening a cabinet, retrieving a gray container, and filling it with water. The old woman took the dress and began to soak it in the water, adding some soap and another liquid that Tifa couldn't quite make out.
"The secret to getting blood out before it sets is some lemon. The acidity can help remove blood." She says as she began to scrub the dress, Tifa watching as the dress seemed to be returning to its natural color the more the older woman scrubbed it and soaked it.
"Thank you for helping me. Everyone I tried asking just ignored me because I came here with Barret. Why didn't you?"
Marie scoffed, "child I am too old for that childish nonsense. I saw that you needed help, so I offered."
Tifa smiled faintly as Marie finally finished washing the dress, holding it up for Tifa to see, who was stunned that all the blood had been able to be washed out and Marie brought it over to the kitchen table, splaying it out where it was ripped and grabbed her sewing supplies.
"I hope your friend is okay considering the number that was done on this dress,"
"Yes, she'll be fine. We're just waiting for her to wake up."
Marie nodded as she began sewing the dress, making sure she made the stitches barely noticeable as she did. Tifa watched as Marie worked, ever so delicately feeding the pink thread through the dress, so focused on her work. Marie didn't take her sight off the dress until she had stitched the whole thing up and when she was done, she held the dress up for Tifa's approval.
"It looks great, you can't even tell where the tear is anymore. Thank you!" Tifa says gratefully, taking the dress and standing, Marie walking her to the door.
"Don't mention it, child. I hope your friend is doing okay."
Tifa smiled as the old woman opened the door and ushered her out, allowing her to finally go to the hotel to be able to get some much-needed sleep after the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Doctor Sheiran was in his office that doubled as his lab for running his tests and he had been running tests on Aerith's blood, wanting to make sure that her system was working as it should. He had put some of her blood on a petri dish and was currently looking at it through a microscope while another machine ran the rest of the blood through.
"That's interesting," he muttered as one of his nurses came in.
"What is it?"
"This girl is an ancient but her blood, I'm seeing some Jenova cells. Ancients don't have those," he says, looking up at the nurse who had the same perplexed look etched across her pale features. The nurse turned as the other machine beeped and the nurse took the piece of paper that it spit out with the results.
"Doctor, you may want to see this," she says, her gray eyes wide in surprise as she passed the results over to the older man.
Doctor Sheiran raised an eyebrow at her as he took the results and looked, having to do a double take as he read them and looked up at the nurse and then back at the paper.
"She's pregnant."