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It’s as nice a day as you ever get in Midgar, and Zack is stuck in a Shinra office, chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen and staring at the blotchy grey-and-white of a form that’s been copied too many times. It sucks.
Sure, if he were out of here he’d be heading down under the Plate anyway, but still. Right now the sunlight is slanting into the abandoned church, making that gorgeous little spotlight. The breeze is weaving its way through Wall Market, bringing the smell of cigarette smoke and frying food to cover the old-engine staleness of the undercity. The old lady on the corner is selling kabobs slathered in enough sweet sauce that no one even needs to care what the meat really is, and she always gives Aerith a discount because everybody likes Aerith, and Zack could be licking that sauce off his fingers and making Aerith laugh right now. Well, on his way to do that, anyway. Or — he checks the clock — actually, no, right… now…
His phone rings.
“Hey, babe, I’m super sorry,” is not the way he wants to be answering the phone, but it’s definitely called for.
“Boy are you in trouble, mister,” Aerith says at almost the same time, though at least she’s laughing. Zack groans, sliding down in the chair as if that will save him from her wrath.
“I’m really sorry. I’m stuck redoing a bunch of mission reports, since apparently I didn’t do them right the first time or something? And Sephiroth can’t file some of his stuff until he has mine, apparently, so he’s got me pinned down in here and I’m not allowed to leave.”
“You certainly aren’t,” Sephiroth calls from the inner office, and Zack groans again, louder.
“You’re killing me here, boss!” he shouts back. “Seriously, I’m really sorry,” he adds, back into the phone. “I thought I just had to work fast enough and I could be done in time, but…”
“Hmm, is that how you ended up having to redo them in the first place?”
“Awww, c’mon.” He pouts pointlessly in the vague direction of Sector Six. “Look, I only have one more, if you’re willing to wait. Or I could try and come down tomorrow —”
“How long is one more going to take? Because I can just go mess around with the garden for a while, it’s all I’d be doing anyway, but if we don’t have time —”
“Zack,” Sephiroth’s voice cuts in from the doorway. “Give me that phone.”
“Awww, but I was just —” Then he gets a look at Sephiroth’s face and almost hits the ground, because that expression usually means snipers.
“I said, give me the phone.”
“Yes sir,” Zack says. “Uh, sorry, babe —” and, praying she has enough sense to hang up if she has to, follows his general’s orders.
Sephiroth lifts the phone to his ear like it’s rigged to blow, and, in a voice Zack has never once heard out of his mouth, says, “Aerith?”
…Has Zack mentioned his girlfriend’s name? Because he tries not to.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” Aerith’s voice is tinny and distant but perfectly audible out of the tiny speaker, at least to a SOLDIER’s ears.
“It’s me,” Sephiroth says, still in that strange lost tiny voice, instead of anything like hey, it’s Sephiroth, the Silver General, Zack’s boss, the Nightmare of Wutai, you know, all that stuff. Or, you know, General Sephiroth speaking. “From the labs. Do —” His fingers tighten briefly around the phone. “Do you not remember?”
There’s a rush of staticky feedback, an indrawn breath next to a mic. “Essie?”
Sephiroth closes his eyes, exhaling, and catches himself against the doorframe. Metal bends under his palm, powder falling from the sheetrock. “You do remember. Yes. It’s me.”
“A — a little.” Aerith is talking too fast, voice strange and choked over the line. “You have to understand, please, I don’t remember the labs very well. I was sick for a while — it’s like a dream. I thought — I thought I must have made you up, that I couldn’t — that you couldn’t — you were alone all that time?”
“I thought you were dead.” Sephiroth sounds a thousand miles away. “I thought he’d killed you. I used to break into the specimen banks to see if I could find what was left of you.” The sound he makes could be a laugh, maybe, hopefully. “I don’t know what I thought I was going to do if I found you. Bury you, perhaps. Keep you with me. I don’t know.”
“Oh. Oh, Essie, I’m so sorry.” Is she crying? Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap. “We left you there alone.”
“How could you help it?” Sephiroth asks. “Hojo does what he pleases, we both know that. Where did they transfer you — did I hear you say something about a garden?”
“They didn’t.” Aerith hiccups, and, shit, she’s definitely crying. “It wasn’t a transfer, we — I maybe shouldn’t say too much over this line, but I’m not there anymore. We… I’m not there anymore.”
Zack has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on, but he can watch Sephiroth stop breathing for a second.
“You what? No, stop, don’t answer. This is a Shinra line, Aerith. Wherever you are, move, now, get going, get to another location. Don’t ask questions. Assume you’re being followed. I’ll find a way to get in contact as soon as I can.”
“No, listen, it’s —”
“Move.” The last time Zack heard Sephiroth sound like that, there was a Wutain attack party with a mastered summon coming over the next ridge, and forty troopers — some of them twice Sephiroth’s age — moved like they were already on fire. He doesn’t have time to find out if it works on Aerith, because Sephiroth snaps the phone shut and throws it back to him. It’s a normal throw, carefully controlled even, and Zack and his enhanced reflexes still barely manage to catch it.
“Sephiroth, what the hell? What’s going on? What —”
“No time.” Sephiroth is already halfway to the door. “Come on. We need to move.”
Military discipline — he does have some, especially when that tone of voice is getting thrown around — is enough to get Zack moving, which is good because his head is still full of staticky, sputtering what? What? What? Sephiroth isn’t running, but he’s moving like he wants to, and Zack has to actually work to keep up.
“So, uh, what —”
“Not here.” Sephiroth stabs the button for the elevator like it’s done him personal offense. “Later.”
“Later? Okay, listen —”
“Zack.” It’s frozen and sharp and a total dick move, but then Sephiroth adds, almost inaudibly, “Please.”
“Uh, okay, shutting up. Later. Okay. Shutting up now.”
The elevators are state-of-the-art, but they’ve never seemed so slow. Zack shifts his weight from foot to foot and bounces on the balls of his feet and tries not to think about Aerith crying, or about the look on Sephiroth’s face, or any of the hey what? What? What? questions rattling around his head, because if he thinks about them he’ll ask, he can’t help it.
Aerith told him she’d rather not attract attention from Shinra. People get in trouble that way, is all. It made sense; he likes his job but he still knows things aren’t great in the slums, and she doesn’t own the church or anything, and he likes talking about her because he likes her but there was never any official reason to bring her up to anybody, so it was fine. At most he’d figured she maybe had some, like, parking tickets, or was ducking the train fares, something like that. Maybe egged someone’s house on the Plate or something. Little unimportant stuff.
He really doesn’t think he ever mentioned her name to Sephiroth. But he’s sure as hell never heard anyone call Sephiroth Essie either. He opens his mouth to ask about that, because come on, there’s no way a nickname can be a secret, but then he takes another look at Sephiroth’s face and — doesn’t. He just follows.
The next corner brings them face-to-face with a polite, unobtrusive sign that reads ADMINISTRATIVE RESEARCH, and Zack almost trips.
“Wait, the Turks?”
“Obviously.”
There goes… any remaining hope at all that this is anything other than deep crap. Zack’s a Second Class and the Turks still scare him. Sephiroth blows through the door like he’s barely noticed it’s there, and Zack gulps and follows.
“Ah, Sephiroth, good.” Tseng opens his office door perfectly on cue, though surprised Turk heads are popping up across the outer cubicles. Sephiroth scans the room, checking — shit — checking heads, weapons, windows, the single other exit door. Tseng tilts his head, and Sephiroth nods curtly and stalks across the room, Zack still trailing baffled in his wake. There’s a split-second spike of panic where he thinks Tseng is going to shut the door in his face, but he doesn’t. He does shut it immediately behind them.
“You’re here about one of the subjects we’ve been monitoring in the Lower City,” he says, before either Sephiroth or Zack can say anything. Sephiroth blinks once, twice, and shifts his weight off the balls of his feet.
“We’ve been monitoring her for some years,” Tseng continues, cool as deep water. “Thus far, we’ve been unable to bring her into custody without either endangering her safety or making her value as an asset public knowledge. At present, keeping her under consistent surveillance is an acceptable solution.”
Sephiroth opens his mouth, closes it again. “I… see.”
“Good.” Tseng nods. “I don’t anticipate needing SOLDIER’s assistance in this matter, given that SOLDIER is rarely suited to covert operations — especially not Mr. Fair here.” He tilts his head towards Zack, who is about to protest when the math adds up behind his eyes and he clamps his mouth shut. “I don’t think that’s a decision I’ll need to defend, and I don’t believe today’s events will meaningfully change the situation.”
“So… that’s it?” Zack tries, glancing from Tseng to Sephiroth and back again. “We just… keep going with our lives, for now?”
Tseng shrugs. “I don’t see any reason to do otherwise.” He looks back to Sephiroth. “I… was unaware you had any particular interest in our surveillance projects,” he says, more quietly now, and something Zack would call halting in anyone besides the leader of the Turks. “You will of course want to remain uninvolved with them, but… she’s not suspected of subversive activity, as such. We don’t report on her social encounters.”
Sephiroth’s eyes go very, very wide. “Oh.” Is Zack missing something? He’s missing something.
“Her tail says she’s still at the derelict church,” Tseng adds, still utterly matter-of-fact but with something different in his face, and ice slithers down Zack’s spine. The church is their place. “I don’t know the details of your… interest,” and that pause is very deliberate, “nor do I wish to. But this is a low-priority matter, and not one you would need to concern yourself with in the course of your duties.”
“I understand.” Sephiroth exhales, glancing out the window and over the Plate. His fingers tap against his thigh.
“Can I help you gentlemen with anything else?” Tseng asks.
“No. Thank you.” Sephiroth takes two steps towards the door and stops, staring at Tseng. “Why?”
What, why is Aerith being monitored? Why is she a low enough priority that SOLDIER doesn’t need to get involved but a high enough priority that — unless Zack is totally nuts — Tseng himself was listening to Zack’s phone call from his girlfriend? Why do she and Sephiroth know each other, and for that matter why did the Turks not know that when they apparently know everything else? Why is her safety such a big deal — to Shinra, obviously it’s a big deal to Zack?
Sephiroth doesn’t elaborate on the question. Tseng’s gaze drops briefly to the carpet, then up. His answer is a string of liquid Wutain, his jaw set.
Another hovering pause. Then Sephiroth jerks his chin in a nod and jerks the door back open.
“Wh — still later?”
“Yes.”
“…Can I at least ask where we’re going?” Zack asks plaintively, half-running in Sephiroth’s wake. They’re moving too fast for much of a conversation anyway. (And this has something to do with keeping Aerith safe, and Zack makes it a policy not to let Sephiroth intimidate him but that tiny please is something else, and — yeah, for once in his life, Zack can shut up.) “Like, immediately?”
“The motor pool,” Sephiroth says tightly, in his no-tolerance-for-fools voice. Zack realizes, distantly, that somewhere several floors away his unfiled reports are gathering dust on the floor, and somewhere in the building someone is waiting on Sephiroth’s almost-finished work, and that nothing is ever going to be the same after this. Sephiroth doesn’t leave anything half-done or late, not ever.
Sephiroth goes straight for the motorcycles, quick and maneuverable through the evening traffic of the Plate. Nobody pulls them over for speeding down the highway, not with Sephiroth in the lead. Sephiroth shows no sign of slowing down when they hit the off-ramp, though, and Zack gulps and opens the throttle enough to cut in front of him.
“Boss, boss, boss, hold up,” he calls, and then brakes hard and trusts in Sephiroth’s instincts and his lead time. Sephiroth skids to a stop instead of hitting him, but the look on his face says this had better be good.
“What?”
“We can’t take two Shinra bikes under Sector Five,” Zack explains. “They’ll get stripped for parts the second we turn around. Plus it’ll get attention, and that’s gonna give Aerith trouble. And they’re not even a good way to get around down there anyway.”
Sephiroth glances from him to the bike to the ramp, to the shadows of the undercity beneath the metal and concrete. Zack’s not sure he’s ever gone below the Plate before. “You visit her often?” He shakes his head, clearly knowing the answer. “Fine. What do you suggest?”
Mostly Zack just takes the train, since he can’t use Shinra wheels on his own time — and is Sephiroth actually allowed to do that, or does it just not occur to anyone that he’d be on anything but business? — but that’s not going to work right now for about a million reasons, so he can improvise. “Park these on the last street up here,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “and take the ramp on foot, it’s not that long. And then cut through the back streets.” Sephiroth might get taken for an imitator of himself, but he might also just get actually recognized, and Zack doesn’t want to know what happens if someone tries to bug him for an autograph right now. Sephiroth just nods once and kicks the bike back into motion, heading for the streetside.
The ramp isn’t really meant to be walked, but there’s space along the shoulder and the two of them can walk off a crashing car or two if they have to. Zack’s never been a coward, but they’re still partway around the first turn of the ramp, Plate-shadow looming up before them, before he says, “So what the hell? You and Aerith know each other?”
“She and Miss Ifalna, her mother, were added to the project about… six years before I went to the front, I believe,” Sephiroth said, long strides eating up the concrete. “Aerith was only a few months old. We were allowed to spend time together, until they were… transferred out some years later. Or so I thought. Until then it had only been the staff and I in the facility.”
“Wait, what?” That only makes everything more confusing. “What do you mean, the project? Facility?”
That does make Sephiroth’s next step falter, for some reason. “What… how much has Aerith already told you about this?”
“Nothing,” Zack says. “Nothing. She never talks about when she was little. Ever.”
“I see.” A pause long enough for Zack to think that’s the end of the sentence, before Sephiroth says, “Then… perhaps she should allowed to explain the rest. Or to be present for it.”
“Maybe?” Zack rubs the back of his head. “She hates talking about bad stuff. She always says there’s no point dwelling on it. It’s probably different when it’s for a reason, though, and this is definitely a reason, so, sure, we can wait.” He kicks a rock on the side of the freeway. Sephiroth only nods. “Her mom’s name is Elmyra, I’ve met her. Uh, but I think she said something once about being adopted. So I guess that explains that.” He chews on his lip. “How old were you again? You said six years before you went to the front?”
“If I’d known my age, I would have said so.”
“Huh. Okay, so how old are you now?”
“Zack.”
“Oof.” Zack winced. “Ouch. Uh, she’s seventeen? If that helps. A year younger than me.” Sephiroth nodded tightly, nothing else. “So, it was you and this Ifalna lady and baby Aerith in this whole mysterious project thing. And the three of you used to hang out? Just a lady and a baby and you?”
“Miss Ifalna took an interest in me. I suppose in a sense so did Aerith.” He tugs at his bangs, with a strange small baffled smile: “She used to chew on my hair.”
“Awww. I bet you were really mad, right?” He can just picture a tiny silver-haired boy with pudgy little chipmunk cheeks, sulking while a baby drools on him.
“…Perturbed,” Sephiroth says, which is splitting hairs if you ask Zack. “And fascinated, I suppose. I had never been around someone younger than me. I thought she must be undersized.”
“Cute.” Zack twists his shoulders back and forth as he walks, trying to shake off the tight uncomfortable feeling building up for no reason at the base of his spine. “Hey, how many years is some years later that they got transferred or left or whatever? Do you know?”
“Five years and some months,” Sephiroth says immediately. “Miss Ifalna kept Aerith informed of her age.”
“Huh. So then you were alone again for a year before you went to the front.” Zack was fifteen when he saw real combat, pretty normal; Sephiroth was probably a little younger, since he’s Sephiroth.
“I was. I didn’t enjoy it.”
“Yeah, I guess not.” He rubs at the back of his head, trying not to grimace. “But she got big enough for you two to kind of play together before that, it sounds like. Essie, huh?”
If any of the other SOLDIERS had a cute baby nickname that Zack found out about, the first thing they’d do would be thump him until he forgot it. Someone like Cloud from the regular troopers would probably try to shrink under the floor. Sephiroth just shrugs, again with that tiny faraway almost-smile.
“The closest she could manage to my name was Effisoss. Essie was an improvement.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
The shadow of the Plate crosses over them between one step and another, landing cold on his skin. Sephiroth’s eyes go round like a cat’s in the darkness. Zack is about to say something else when Sephiroth says, “Has she been well? Happy?”
Some random quirk of Zack’s memory flashes up the results for the SOLDIER entrance exam: the thin greyish envelope and the crinkle of the plastic window, and the second where hope felt like terror before he ripped the paper open.
“Far as I know,” he says. “She’s a cheerful person. Hey, you’ll be able to see for yourself soon! She’ll want to show you her flowers and everything, she’s super proud of them.”
“Flowers in Midgar?”
“I know, right? I always knew she was special.”
“Special.” Sephiroth shakes his head, but not in disagreement. “If anyone could…”
Zack doesn’t poke at the things Aerith keeps back. He’s not the kind of guy to worry about stuff, and they both like to enjoy the moment. But the places that she loves are like nowhere else in Midgar, because anyone would bloom for her. And he’s caught the edges of something in the moments between smiles, something as big and dark as the Plate above them, and most of her smiles are real anyway. He trusts that. So maybe he knows what Sephiroth means.
“Hey, we’re out now — what is it Tseng said to you, anyway?” he asks. “There at the end, I mean.” Sephiroth is silent for long enough that Zack folds his arms over his chest and huffs. “Fine, don’t tell me.”
“Apologies. I’m attempting to translate.” Sephiroth shakes his head briefly; his hair looks almost dirty in the dull yellow underplate lights. “My Wutain is utilitarian at best; Tseng is fluent. But in context, I believe it was roughly… that he did not wish to cage the last free thing in Midgar either.”
“Oh.” The ground crunches less under their feet, now, going from gravelly sand over the concrete to hard-packed, oily gray. “Huh, who knew old Tseng had a poetic streak?”
“A romantic streak,” Sephiroth corrects. “For obvious reasons, he doesn’t advertise it.”
“Huh.”
The ramp hits ground, and the road splits like a river delta into half-official junk-lined streets. Zack steers them onto the back ways where they’ll have to shank some rats but no one will try to get a picture with the General, and tries not to look at any of the thoughts bubbling away at the back of his head.
Sephiroth actually slows as they get close to the church, for all the broken speed limits on the way. Zack checks the shadows for any kind of sneaky both-ends-against-the-middle Turk bullshit, checks the rooftops and even the distant topline-sniper girders of the plate, but there’s nothing. And then they pass another block, and it’s getting clearer with every step that that kind of hunt has nothing to do with Sephiroth’s hesitant, halting feet.
“Nervous, buddy?” Zack asks. “Come on, it’s just Aerith! You know her, she’s not — okay, she’s a little scary, but not like that. It’s like, hey how did I agree to do all your weeding for you again kind of scary.”
“I knew her a decade ago,” Sephiroth corrects, suddenly sharp, and for a second he looks weirdly like Cloud of all people, like Cloud at his most prickly-shy.
“C’mon, she can’t have changed that much,” Zack protests, resolutely ignoring the brief chill somewhere under his solar plexus. She’s his Aerith, his girl, impish and kind and sharp as a whip, and that’s gotta be what matters.
“And if I have?” It’s ragged, too quiet. Zack wrinkles his nose.
“Whatcha mean?”
“The last time I saw her, we were both just children,” Sephiroth says. His hand clenches briefly in the folds of his coat. “Since then, I’ve killed several hundred people at a conservative estimate. Among other things. What if… I may not be as she remembers.”
“Uh.” Zack rubs at the back of his head, letting his hand drop to squeeze the tension building in his neck. “I mean, I’m a SOLDIER too, remember? It’s never been a problem, she’s cool with it. It won’t be a big deal.”
“Perhaps.” Sephiroth doesn’t look reassured in the slightest, but he keeps moving, one foot in front of the other like he expects a sinkhole to open up underneath him.
The door to the church is half-open, letting what’s left of the breeze in. Aerith is up to her wrists in the weary dirt, biting her lip in this tight, scrunch-eyebrowed fretful way he only ever gets to see for a few seconds at a time, or once in a while in the dark of her room — she hides her face in his chest when she’s sad, when she lets herself be sad around him. She must not have heard them yet.
Sephiroth makes a sound a normal man would make when he’s just been punched in the gut, and Aerith drops her trowel right on top of a flower.
“You’re here,” she breathes, naked shock on her face, and then she’s on her feet and running.
“Hey, uh, babe, he doesn’t —” Zack starts, because Sephiroth is weird about touch; he twitches through handshakes, not to mention how long it took him to stop jumping whenever Zack jogged his elbow, and Zack’s watched him look at both Scarlet and Heidegger like he’s planning to take their hands off at the wrists. But apparently he doesn’t know anything anymore, because Sephiroth shoves past him to take three SOLDIER-quick steps into Aerith’s arms.
For a while they just… cling. Aerith clutches at Sepiroth’s waist like he’s all that’s holding her up, and Sepiroth’s face is hidden in her hair for all that he has to bend to do it. His hands are twisted into the back of her dress, and as Zack watches, Sephiroth’s fingers spasm briefly and Aerith’s dress parts quietly along four inches of seam. Neither of them even notice.
It’s hard, knowing you’ll break someone if you hug them the way you want to.
“I promise I’m all right, by the way,” Aerith says at last, pulling back just enough to say it. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I spoke to Tseng,” Sephiroth says, a little ruefully. “He explained the situation.” He sets his hands on Aerith’s shoulders, staring at her. “Look at you. You’re alive. You’re beautiful.”
“I really am sorry,” she says, soft and heavy, and squeezes his wrists. “So, so sorry. I should have — we should have — we left you.”
“I’m not,” Sephiroth says. “We never could have both got away. I’m amazed that you did.” He bites his lip, glancing around the church. “Is Miss Ifalna…”
Aerith shakes her head. “Gone back to the Planet. She got hurt getting us out, or I think she hurt herself. I didn’t know how to help.” She would have been five and a bit, Sephiroth said? “She was… she was free at the end, at least.”
Sephiroth closes his eyes, for just a moment. “I suppose another miracle was too much to hope for. I’m sorry.” He tilts his head, looking her over again. “Your hair looks just like hers.”
Aerith tugs at her bangs, one-handed. “Does it? It’s been so long…”
“It does.” He’s still looking at her like — hell, maybe he is trying to memorize her. “Your jaw, too.”
“That I remember. And speaking of hair, yours is so long now!” Sephiroth echoes her gesture, eerily similar, and Aerith smiles. “It looks good.” The words could be any girl in Midgar welcoming her brother home, all bright and cheerful, but there are tears in her eyes, even more unsettling than the ones that glint on Sephiroth’s face.
“Hey, so, uh,” Zack says, into the tiny world around the two of them. “Anyone wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Both of them look to him, and neither of them says anything, and for half a silent second an ice-cold panic lances up Zack’s spine. Then Aerith says, “Yes, of — of course, but come sit down.”
Sephiroth’s coat forms ungainly folds around his knees as they sit before the altar; he arranges it carefully away from the flowers. Aerith clears her throat and says, “So, um. I guess we didn’t have the most normal childhood.”
“Yeah, I’ve, uh, I’ve been getting that.”
She laughs a little, like this is one of those rueful stories everybody has: oh, you know. Families. “I don’t really know what the project was about, but…”
“I’m not positive that we were technically the same project, actually,” Sephiroth says, more contemplative than anything else. “Something Hojo said gave me the impression that we were… related studies, in some way. By the time I was old enough to pay attention to the files, I was part of the SOLDIER project, and you were certainly never that. Thankfully.” Wait, what?
“No,” Aerith says, before Zack can ask. “But what I am is — well, my mother was. So. Half. But. I’m an Ancient.” She shrugs one shoulder, twisting her fingers in her skirt; her knuckles stand out white as bone. She’s still trying to smile. “It’s… not a big deal, really.”
“Oh. Huh. An Ancient.” Zack knows what his girl looks like when she’s scared. He doesn’t know how to fix it. “That’s… pretty awesome. Oh! And it explains the flowers, right?”
“Yeah.” She curls one hand around the nearest blossom, running her fingers along the stem. “It’s… it could be awesome, maybe. If things were different.” She swallows. “Shinra studied us. They wanted to learn more about what we could do, and how they could use it. It wasn’t the best way to grow up.” She glances up at Sephiroth. “I wonder if you’re part Ancient too? It would be nice not to be the only one.”
“A Cetra,” Sephiroth says quietly. “Your mother always corrected Hojo about that. I was very impressed.” He clears his throat. “I started SOLDIER treatments very young, or what later became SOLDIER treatments. If there was more to it than that, I couldn’t say. But… if we do share that, I would be honored.” His hand covers Aerith’s with painstaking care.
“Well, babe, I love you whether you’re an Ancient or a Cetra or a Snow with dyed hair or five tonberries in a big coat,” Zack says, and he’s basically just taking shots in the dark at this point, but he figures that’s a safe one. Aerith’s shoulders slacken, her spine softening, and Zack scoots close enough to wrap his arm around her shoulders. She leans back into him, squeezing Sephiroth’s hand in hers.
“Thanks, Zack.”
“Of course, c’mon!” He looks up. “Same for you, big guy.” The look Sephiroth gives him is searching, more than anything, and what he’s looking for Zack can’t begin to guess. “Seriously, I mean it. So, uh, I’m guessing this wasn’t like you go in once a week after school to get your reflexes tested and then go out for ice cream?”
“No,” Sephiroth says, acidically dry. “It was not.” He glances over at Aerith, who is only grimacing. “It was… the first facility was a house and a garden, and the laboratory beneath, and I… believe there may have been a town outside? I must have been young, I don’t remember it very clearly. We relocated to headquarters after Professor Gast left, and about a year later, Aerith and Miss Ifalna joined us. I always had the impression that those were related?” That last is addressed to Aerith, tentative and hopeful.
“Wait, who’s Professor Gast?” Zack slides in, before the two of them can spiral out away from him again.
“The original lead of the project,” Sephiroth answers, calmly enough. “He was a great man, and… kind.”
“He, uh…” Zack swallows around a phantom-sense of something squirming in his throat. “Man, I hate to be a downer but he doesn’t sound all that kind.”
“Hojo always had final authority over me, even before he took over the full project.” Sephiroth’s jaw tightens, a tiny flicker of movement. “Professor Gast was gentler, and more willing to talk. He always explained what he was doing, and he was happy to talk outside of tests, as well.”
“He was my father,” Aerith says, very quietly. She shifts, drawing her knees up to her chest, leaning her weight against Zack’s side. She doesn’t let go of Sephiroth’s hand. Zack’s not sure wild beasts could get her to. “I’m… pretty sure, anyway. She told me that they ran away together, but that Shinra caught up with them. A little after I was born, but she didn’t say that part.”
“I see.” It’s a sigh, something old let go at last; Sephiroth closes his eyes for a brief moment. “I had suspected. I was furiously jealous, for a while,” he adds, a little ruefully. “I missed him terribly, and… I used to hope that he was mine. My father, I mean.”
“Really?” Aerith blinks at him. “I didn’t know that.”
“I did get over it by the time you could walk,” Sephiroth says dryly. “It was difficult to resent someone who kept sneaking away to come find me. Even if you did chew on my hair.”
“He mentioned that on the way down,” Zack tells Aerith. “Still adorable, by the way. I wish I had pictures.”
“Unfortunately, those were only for medical documentation,” Sephiroth says, and Zack seriously considers just hauling off and punching himself in the mouth.
“Anyway,” Aerith says, saving him from his own idiocy. “It was just us and the Shinra people, in there. It was probably kind of boring, looking after someone so much younger, but I guess there wasn’t really very much else to do.”
“I was never bored,” Sephiroth swears. His lips twitch. “Exasperated, often, terrified occasionally, but never bored.”
“Sounds like Aerith,” Zack says, smiling. Aerith smiles back, but it’s tissue paper, bright and thin.
“It really is hard for me to remember, back then,” she says. “It’s all… foggy. And most of the time I don’t want to remember anyway. So it was — it made sense, thinking that I must have made you up. You were so different from the rest of it. And even when I saw you on the broadcasts, it didn’t add up, you looked so much older and so different, you even sounded different. I thought I must have seen a, a report, or something, or somebody’s notes, about — the real you, and then made up my friend. But we left you, and you were there alone this whole time, stuck in that horrible place, and I didn’t even — I’m so sorry.” She hunches away from them both, covering her face with her hands. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Aerith —” Sephiroth’s hand stops an inch from her skin; he shoots Zack a silent, helpless plea. Zack doesn’t have a clue what to do either, really, but he’s gotta do something, so he sets his hand between her shoulder blades and starts rubbing tiny hopeful circles.
“Hey, babe, it’s okay,” he promises. “It’s okay. He’s not mad. You’re both here now, okay? You can see each other whenever you want, Tseng even said. He left wherever you were a year after you did anyway, he told me on the way down. Right, Seph?”
“Uh — right.” Sephiroth is still caught in wide-eyed panic, and Zack finds himself thinking of Cloud again, that overwhelmed country-boy look he gets sometimes. “…please don’t cry?”
Aerith sniffs fiercely, scrubbing the back of her hand over her eyes. “I should have done something.”
“Aerith, you were no older than I was when I met you and your mother,” Sephiroth says, with careful gentleness. “Younger, most likely. What could you have done?”
“Tried,” she answers quietly. “Written a letter. Asked Tseng to take a message. Said something to Zack, maybe, years ago. Something besides just sitting here and lying to myself.”
Sephiroth flinches. It’s not enough to hide the longing in his face.
“You’re here now,” Zack says, still rubbing his hand slow over her back. “You’re both here now.” He catches Sephiroth’s eye and beckons, two quick fingers, and Sephiroth leans forward with all the caution of a rookie picking up a gun for the first time to take her hand again in his.
“We are,” she says, and smiles. And Zack’s always thought she hung the moon, but that might be when it sinks in just how brave she really is. “Oh, you know what, come here, you.” This time when she pulls Sephiroth closer they end up half in Zack’s lap, instead of halfway across the room, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to wrap his arms around them both.
Sephiroth is smaller than he looks. The muscles of Aerith’s shoulders are like steel wire as she holds on.
Zack is never going to walk in to work again without hearing Aerith’s voice say that horrible place. He’s never going to be able to look at Hojo, look at even the signs for the Science Department, without thinking about Sephiroth sneaking into specimen banks to grieve. Somewhere at the back of his head he’s adding up some ages he doesn’t much like, and there’s still so much silence about what happened in those labs that’s going to keep him up at night, and he doesn’t know how he’s ever going to have a normal day at work, ever again. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do with any of this.
But they’re here now.