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“Chop, chop, Mister SOLDIER.” the flower girl from Loveless Avenue bosses from several paces ahead of him. “If you can’t keep up, I’ll have to start holding interviews for your replacement.”
Cloud grumbles, gripping the woven basket he’s holding like a grocery sack containing rotting flesh instead of dozens of colorful, sweetly fragrant flowers. Aerith stops and turns back around to wait up for him.
“I’m not falling behind because I can’t keep up,” he protests cooly. “Guarding effectively means making sure I have all angles around you in sight while still being close enough to act. But interview away; I doubt you’ll get much interest for this gig.”
“Is that so? I pay very well, as you know,” she hedges, hinting at the supposed date she’s offering him as payment for his bodyguard services.
He can’t help the heat that leaps into his face despite himself at the aloof way she teases him. Equal parts infuriating and alluring, and he isn’t altogether sure why. “You saying you promise dates as payment to every guy you ask to do your bidding for the day?”
Cloud catches up to her in his own sweet time just to clearly make out bubble gum pink lips lift into a smirk. She answers with a flippant shrug as she turns back to resume their march. She almost bounces as she walks, silken light brown braid dancing in the dusty slum air.
“Maybe, maybe not. Why? Would that bother you, me offering my time up to the highest bidder right in front of you?” she quips. Her face is hidden so he can’t make out if she’s toying with him or genuinely avoiding the question. That’s been the dance routine since he fell into her flowerbed at the church—he speaks plain, and she occasionally takes things seriously. More often than not he finds that she prefers to tease him, adding more pieces to the already complicated puzzle that is Aerith Gainsborough.
“No. Why would I care?”
Aerith hums ahead of him. “Answering a question with a question. A very dangerous and mysterious mercenary, for sure.”
Cloud rolls his eyes, his hackles rising just a bit. He’s not angry, but he feels challenged in a way that is frustratingly foreign to him. “I’m getting annoyed. Let’s just deliver these flowers so I can get you back to your mom and I can get back to Sector 7 tomorrow.”
It would have been by tonight if it was up to Cloud, but Aerith jumped at Elmyra’s suggestion for them to wait until morning so they could have a whole day for the trip. It still doesn’t make sense to him for her to escort him to Sector 7 then come back alone, but that isn’t his problem.
“So rude.”
He ignores her comment in lieu of a silent trek, ready to be done with this chore. The Sector has a homey feel to it, as much as he hates to admit it. He had been feeling much less uneasy about everything until meeting Elmyra. Her scrutinizing albeit sad eyes when they’d been alone downstairs while waiting for Aerith made him feel like he was being sized up.
Normally he wouldn’t have cared about the woman’s opinion, but after an entire day of being subjected to Aerith’s pep and relentless prodding, the curious glances from her mom had made him feel heavy, like lead. She had been the picture of graciousness, but Cloud’s SOLDIER training made him an expert at intuiting body language. So, he finds himself ready to guard the girl until she’s satisfied so he can slip away back to the world he knows best.
Aerith continues leading him down the snaking, worn earth path from her verdant, sweet-smelling home back to the thoroughfare.
“But for the record,” Cloud says icily. “Asking random assholes to come along with you for menial chores seems like a good way to get hurt.”
“Still thinking about that, huh?” she laughs, but it’s not needling. Her tone is soft and musical, happy—she sounds genuinely relieved. “I’m glad you’re taking your job seriously by caring about what happens to little ole me.”
Cloud doesn’t know how to respond to the way she twists his words on him, so he instead snaps his lips shut as they approach the Leaf House’s door. She twirls in a one-eighty on the stoop, dress ballooning out above her ankles. He idly thinks she looks like a princess from the storybooks he read as a kid, and she holds out her hand for his basket. He drops it into her outstretched palm.
“I’ll wait out here,” he tells her before she can suggest anything different.
“Oh, okay.” she sounds a bit disappointed, and Cloud is annoyed with himself by how much he hates the way it makes her face fall and lilt drop. “But this will take a while. Maybe look around while I’m inside?”
He squares his jaw. He finds the thought of leaving her irks him even though it was his idea. Aerith is as safe as she can be inside the orphanage. He rationalizes the feeling by telling himself the longer this takes, the longer before he can get back to Sector 7. He nods, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of letting on that he doesn’t want to meander around the slums without her. She may take too long inside the House, obviously.
“Fine, but don’t take too long.” is what he wants to say, but all that comes out is a grunt.
Aerith gives him a look he can’t decode before smiling at him and wresting open the orphanage door. She closes it promptly behind herself, but he can still hear a deluge of muffled conversation beyond the wooden barrier between them. Several children must have come running to greet her, gleefully squealing her name and cheering.
“Aerith! Wow, the flowers are so pretty!”
“You still with the scary guy? Where is he?”
She’s being tugged by the arms and dress hem by no less than three kids, but she doesn’t miss an opportunity to tease him. “Outside. But he’s not scary at all! He picked out all of these flowers just for you guys!”
“Wow,” one of the children gasps. “Tell him thank you and—”
They move far enough away from the thick wood of the doors that he can no longer hear what’s being said. He finds himself alone in the Leaf House’s quad area.
He follows Aerith’s advice and takes himself on a begrudging tour of the neighborhood. People are still working, struggling, peddling their wares, and chattering uneasily about the recent reactor attacks like they are everywhere else in Midgar, yet it’s not the same. Maybe it’s the flowers he sees decorating most of the businesses, or the Turks that are apparently lurking in the shadows ready to bully the local flower peddler.
Or maybe it’s Cloud that feels different. He wonders if he has a mild concussion from falling from the reactor to the underside of the Plate where he finds himself now. The people don’t take much notice of him. He hears a few of them gossip about seeing him with Aerith earlier, but no one speaks to him directly.
He walks until he finds himself at the entrance to the Sector that leads to the scrapyard from where Aerith and himself had come from. He could leave and she wouldn’t be the wiser. She’s home in her neighborhood so he assumes his bodyguard work is effectively complete, anyway.
“No,” he asserts to himself. “Can’t leave without telling her.”
He hasn’t been properly paid yet, his brain quickly clarifies right after. Although, a date with Aerith won’t pay for better materia or gear. He resolves to hold his ground with her when he returns to the orphanage. He needs gil, not her being cute with him, batting her green eyes and giving him pointed looks from behind curtains of long lashes.
Speaking of gear, Cloud decides to stop at a couple of the local shops. He finds one man peddling armor and weapons out of a derelict RV. He’s decently stocked with materia and curatives, but there isn’t anything better than what he currently has. However, he spies a mythril armlet laid out among the wares at the stall. Cloud squints, trying to remember what Aerith was using earlier as they fought their way through the scrapyard.
She already has this, he recalls, and her staff is probably superior to what this guy is selling currently. He leaves the stall empty-handed, but not before he runs into the kid who greeted them when they first arrived in the Sector after seeing Scarlet’s interview on the giant screen in the square. What’s his name again? Oates?
“Uhh…” the boy begins. “Where’s Aerith?”
Cloud sighs. “Back at the Leaf House.”
Oates nearly trips over his own feet without another word, presumably scurrying off to the House himself after her. Cloud thinks that’s a good idea.
He heads back in the direction of Aerith. He’s been wandering around the slums for nearly half an hour at this point, surely she must be done helping with…whatever it is she was doing. Sure enough, he finds her standing near one of the large tables outside, worrying her bottom lip. His locked and loaded grill about the gil she owes him immediately dies in his throat. Oates stands beside her, also looking uneasy.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
Aerith looks up at the sound of his voice and frowns. “Someone is spooking the children, apparently. Someone dressed in black.”
“Turks?”
“That’s what I thought, too. But I’m not sure.”
Oates pipes up to clarify: “It’s a creepy guy who’s always stumbling around in black robes with holes all in them.”
Sounds too familiar to Cloud for it to be a coincidence.
Aerith looks over at him. “I don’t like this. I’m going to see what’s going on.”
“I’ll come too. Sounds like someone I’ve met before.”
The menial chore of checking on the kids turns out to be a full-blown rescue mission. When they arrive at the children’s secret hideout, Oates tells them that two of his friends have gone missing, and of course, Aerith is determined to help. He once again finds himself letting her lead him around the winding paths through the Sector 5 scrapyard—Shinra’s abandoned construction-now-dumpsite. She’s equal parts graceful and deadly with her impressive array of offensive spells against the smoggers and hedgehog pies.
Cloud is learning that Aerith really can handle herself. She takes care of him, too. Her healing spells lick across his skin promptly and carefully when he feels near to the point of exhaustion. The relief that comes with its tendrils nursing him back to health almost feel like a special extension of Aerith’s caregiving nature.
The two children—a boy and a girl—got themselves stranded on a lonely piece of scrap floating in the middle of the water at the dump’s lowest point. Getting them out isn’t difficult, and neither is fighting their way out and back to the hideout. The kids are impressed regardless. Once Aerith tells them that Cloud used to be a SOLDIER, it’s all they talk about the whole way back.
It doesn’t get eventful until they’re about to leave the hideout after Oates gives them a handmade necklace—a pass that gets even “grown ups” into the sanctity of the children’s safely guarded haven. Cloud thinks the whole thing is silly, but Aerith, of course, treats it like the finest treasure on the Planet, admiring it as they prepare to squeeze back through the narrow path to the slums.
Several screams and squeals sound out and both he and Aerith turn back to see what the commotion is about. Cloud’s hand is already gripping his sword as the reason for the children’s fear becomes obvious. The robed figure mentioned earlier is hobbling through the secluded playground. Before he can make any move to defend the kids or Aerith, the cloaked man groans and tumbles, kicking up dust as he falls to ground.
Both he and Aerith kneel to get a better look at the pitiful lump. Cloud’s face pinches as he tries to recall his neighbor at Stargazer Heights. They look similar, but he realizes that they aren’t the same.
“What do you think the ‘2’ is for?” Aerith asks him, looking at the number tattooed in midnight black ink on his shoulder.
Cloud doesn’t have an answer, and trying to think of one sufficiently distracts him enough that a jolt of terror careens though him when the man’s corpse-like hand snaps out and grips his wrist. Suddenly, the splitting pain scratching at the back of his skull is back. Cloud hisses, jumping to his feet.
Suddenly, Sephiroth is there. Cloud’s blood runs cold in his veins as his chief nightmare speaks in riddles about reunions and not being afraid. Then the legend leaves just as quickly as he appeared, but Cloud has a hard time shaking off the sharp terror even after he’s gone.
He looks down at his leather gloved hand, trying to find something—anything to tether himself back to reality.
Smaller, more slender fingers wrap around his hand.
“Keep it together, Cloud.”
Aerith is giving him a reassuring squeeze. Her eyes are kind but serious, imploring. She doesn’t seem frightened or repulsed by his outburst, just concerned.
Cloud swallows hard. Her touch does a good job of quelling the panic attack and it only takes a few more moments for his breathing and heart rate to even back out.
When he looks back, the robed man is hobbling out of the children’s hideout as if nothing had happened. Cloud tries to pick Aerith’s brain about Sephiroth after the enigmatic figure leaves, though that does seem to make her balk. It’s natural; he died years ago according to Shinra, so why is he haunting Cloud’s mind like a walking bad dream? She drops the subject like a hot coal for him before he can spiral too far by urging them towards the exit where Oates waits.
“Thanks again.” the boy croaks out, visibly shaken by the appearance of the robed man. Only Cloud can see Sephiroth. “By the way, people around here always need a helping hand. They tell me about jobs they need done and their problems. If you’re interested, let me know.
“Oh, that sounds like a good opportunity for you, Cloud.”
“I’m on the clock,” he reminds her.
“I give you my permission.”
Another lesson Cloud is learning; it’s impossible to win an argument with Aerith.
In acquiesce he lets it go, turning his attention to a kid dressed as a moogle dancing in the corner of the hideout. Even compared to the last few minutes, Cloud finds this one of the more bizarre things that’s happened so far today. It’s apparently a nod to some sort of legend that Cloud has never heard of before. Not that it stops Aerith from telling him about it anyway.
But instead of gil, this kid wants some of the weird medals Cloud has picked up here and there in his journeying around the slums. Sounds like a disappointment waiting to happen, but he figures it won’t hurt to look at what “Moggie” is selling. Aerith breaks away to chat up the other children who are all too happy to show her around their secret hideout while he browses.
Cloud uses the slight privacy to admire the Silver Staff Moggie has in stock. It’s a mere two of the moogle medals out of the dozen or so he’s collected which, honestly, feels like a steal. It’s definitely a step up from the one Aerith is currently using. He chances a glance over at her to find her thoroughly distracted, giggling at a group of the children putting on some sort of improv play for her.
Cloud quickly drops two of the medals into Moggie’s hand, and the boy begins to loudly and profusely thank him. Of course, it attracts the attention of Aerith, who excuses herself from the other children and hurries over to see what the commotion is about.
“All done shopping?” she asks with a smile.
“These medals will make so many people happy!” Moggie claps and Cloud feels his face burn all the way to the tips of his ears. He tries to calmly hide the staff behind the large sword fastened to his back. It doesn’t stop Aerith from noticing his change in demeanor, because of course it doesn’t.
She blinks owlishly at him. “Everything alright? You look real tense again.”
“M’fine. I just… Just thought that maybe… You would—” he clears his throat. Why is this so damn hard?
“You thought that maybe I would… what?”
Cloud steels himself and pulls the staff out from behind him so Aerith can see it. “H-here, this is for you. Figured you could use an upgrade.”
Green eyes twinkle as she grins. “A staff? Very practical.”
When she puts it like that, he feels stupid for having tried. “Sorry,” he mumbles. A pathetic attempt at saving face.
She takes the staff from him, sizing it up in her grasp. “No, no, no, you’re so sweet, Cloud! I’ve never seen one quite like this in any of the other shops around here. It’s gorgeous. But you should have gotten something useful for yourself.”
“You being better protected is what’s useful for me.”
Aerith beams, deep green irises twinkling at him. She playfully taps his bare shoulder with the end of her new staff. “You do care about me, Mister Bodyguard. Way to get back into my good graces after being so mean earlier. I think I’ll keep you.”
Cloud huffs to mask the feeling of blood rushing to his head, like he’s upright suddenly after having been on his head for a long time. It’s uncomfortable, but a secret part of him likes the near-drunken thrill. “—Whatever.”
His blundering through their interactions doesn’t faze her at all.
“C’mon, Cloud. We still have some time before dinner. Let’s go see who we can help around town—hopefully earn you a few gil.”
Aerith leads the way out of the hideout, but once they reach the mouth of the narrow squeeze, she blocks him from getting out by planting her feet firmly so that she’s trapping him from taking another step.
“What now?” he grouses.
Aerith gives him a small wink, pressing an errant finger firmly to the middle of his chest. “Thank you for the gift.”
Cloud’s face feels suddenly hot again, and he replies with a noncommittal shrug. “It’s no big deal.”
Mercifully, she doesn’t goad him any longer, just steps aside so he can exit the tight passage.
And Oates wasn’t lying. People continue to bombard them both, asking for them to do some chore or other or thanking Aerith for helping with this and that the day before. Cloud stays silent as he walks behind her, but he gets the impression she spends her time tending her flowers and selling them, and when she isn’t doing that, she’s doing odd jobs around the Sector. The people flock to her like metal to a magnet. The town doctor had been right—she is popular.
When they swing back by the Leaf House to check on the children, the Housemother pulls them aside.
“Look at what we did with all those beautiful flowers you brought us!” she gushes to them. Cloud looks to the outside wall she motions to. It’s a great sphere of flora, decorated in whites, yellows, and lavenders. It’s like a painted by flower version of a chocobo.
“There was also a man dressed in black headed towards Aerith’s house,” she warns, and Aerith and Cloud share a knowing look. The Turks are still hanging around. But Aerith doesn’t express that she’s worried or wants to head immediately back, so he follows her lead and continues to hang around the Leaf House.
The Housemother and Aerith spend a few moments gabbing about how gorgeous the flower mural is. Cloud does laps around the tables, sporadically listening. He doesn’t give his two cents, but it is kind of impressive they threw this together within such a short period of time.
Aerith dances back over to him after her talk ends, all smiles. “You liked it too, Mister. You didn’t say a word but your eyes always give you away.”
“It looks fine.” he admits, and she looks genuinely surprised he doesn’t deny it. “But about what she said. Wanna go back to check on your mom?”
Aerith’s bottom lip protrudes. “Oh, ready to end the fun so soon?”
Cloud can’t catch a break with her. “N-no, just thought that with the Turks hanging around near your house you’d wanna—”
“They won’t bother Mom,” she assures him. “Never have before, anyway. We still have time to get you a few more jobs.”
Before? For how long exactly have the Turks been haranguing her? And why?
He almost asks when another teacher that works at The Leaf House—Ms. Folia— interrupts them and tells them about a group of children on patrol that haven’t returned yet for her lessons. Of course, Aerith readily agrees to help round them up. Cloud didn’t think the jobs in this Sector would involve fussing after kids like a mother hen. They’re all wearing homemade wooden swords that look remarkably like the Buster Sword and Cloud isn’t sure how to feel about all the children pretending to be SOLDIERS like he was.
“Oh, stop looking so grumpy,” she chides him after they find the last kid while heading back to the House. “These kids adore you, and you’ve been sweet to them, too. Don’t pretend you don’t like them.”
“Not pretending,” he grumbles. “Pay for this gig sucks.”
Aerith just laughs at him but doesn’t press.
When they return, Ms. Folia thanks them and heads inside, urging the children behind her. But the group hangs back, talking of a “toad king” that’s been hanging around their secret hideout.
“I don’t work for free. Or cheap,” Cloud reminds them.
“But we don’t have any money!” one kid chirps.
Another is quick to interject. “—But we do have treasure!”
“Well, today is your lucky day,” he tells them. “Running a special on toad king jobs right now. Three gil should cover it.”
The kids cheered. “Wow, what a steal! We can do that. Please go get that nasty toad king, mister and Aerith so the other grown-ups don’t shut down our hideout!”
Cloud sighs, taking off in the direction of their clandestine playground. Aerith almost skips to catch up with him, looking much too smug for Cloud’s liking. He tries and fails to avoid eye contact.
“Three gil special, huh? Big softie.” she teases.
“Kids talk,” he asserts. “They’ll pay me in reputation. That’s why I’m doing it.”
“Uh-huh. Of course.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“Maybe, but you like it.”
In his core, something rings true in that statement, and it makes his heart beat against the wall of his chest. His pulse quickens. At first her playfulness was easy to shake off. She matches him easily—too easily. She’s probably like this with everyone she meets, but Cloud can’t help but get sucked into her orbit anyway. He’s never met someone so confusing. She’s kind, vulnerable, challenging. Then on the other side, fierce, resilient, coquettish—mercurial. Cloud finds himself unable to keep up with Aerith, yet she doesn’t seem fazed by him in the least.
So he presses on in the direction the kids last remembered seeing the toad king
Finishing off the toad king brings them back to the children and to his three gil. But the “treasure” they teased turns out to be an garish weapon—a bat with a couple dozen nails driven into the ivory painted oak. Admittedly actually not a terrible reward. The rest of the late afternoon fades into a blur of being led around the slums behind a pink ribbon and bouncing braid. There’s a man terrified of some monsters hanging around the scrap—turns out to be Monodrives. He seemed to be alright at first but upon returning, Cloud finds his anti-Shinra schtick irksome. He can only take so much.
“Hold up—” Cloud begins to bite back, but Aerith, cordial with even assholes, quickly interjects before the exchange gets out of hand.
“Anyway,” Aerith chirps, albeit a little wobbly. “Spread the word. Call Cloud for all your mercenary needs!”
The jackass directs them to an old man who needs help paying respects to his dead wife, whose grave has become a monster den. Aerith becomes somber during this job. She stays silent for most of the trip and even through the battles among the beasts of the scrap heaps. Cloud finds it makes him uneasy, not hearing her constant chattering in his ear that has become almost like a marching drum over the course of their hours together.
Once they arrive, they find it’s invested with venomantises. It’s one of the harder battles but still nothing overtly difficult. Cloud makes it through without anything more serious than mild poisoning. The hard part comes with Aerith fussing over him as she oversees him drinking down a remedy and tending to a few shallow scrapes.
“That was a close call, Mister,” she scolds him, fingers dancing over his arm right above the hem of his leather gauntlet near one of the nastier scratches. It makes gooseflesh erupt over his skin. They’re sitting on a junked bench nearby to the grave while they recover. “You need to be more careful—I can handle myself. You didn’t need to take that hit for me.”
“I’m your bodyguard, remember? That’s exactly what I needed to do.”
Aerith presses her lips into a thin line. Her brows are creased with worry and her eyes have a watery sheen. There’s something troubling but beautiful about that face on her, he’s embarrassed to admit to himself. But Cloud has eyes, he argues within himself, it’d be impossible not to notice.
“I still don’t like it,” Aerith whispers.
Cloud has to fight off a grin and he isn’t altogether sure he succeeds. “Oh? You do care.”
Aerith sniffs and gives him a gentle shove. “Jerk. But thank you for making me feel better.”
“I wasn’t trying—” he begins to argue, but she moves away from him, fingertips lingering against his skin just a millisecond longer than necessary and the rest of the words never come.
“All done!” she announces, getting up from the bench after doing what she can for his bruises, scrapes, and poisoning.
Her healing skills are impeccable. He feels much better; the dizziness is gone, he notes, as he stands to his feet after her. They both make their way to the grave.
“Want to say a prayer with me?” she offers, looking at him hopefully.
“I think you’ve got it covered.”
When they return, the jackass is waiting with the old man. Cloud gets the feeling they’ve known each other a long time. Aerith wastes no time telling the man that they paid their respects and offered prayers. In an effort to get the man to exercise those legs for the next time he needs to make the journey to visit his wife, Cloud gives him a choice between forking over 5k gil for Cloud to deliver the key back to Moggie, or doing it himself for free. This doesn’t go over well with either of the men and they leave in a huff. But with the gil for both jobs secure, Cloud finds he doesn’t care.
“Doesn’t helping people feel good?” Aerith asks. Cloud is truthfully feeling more surprised that she doesn’t fuss at him for pissing off the old man, but he doesn’t say so.
Cloud grunts.
“Aren’t you having fun?” she continues to prod.
“So much,” Cloud deadpans. Aerith lets the sarcasm fall away like water off her back.
“It’s all about service and salesmanship, Cloud!”
“I’ll leave that to you.”
“Don’t think you can rely on me forever, Mister.” she warns him.
Right. He’s back to Sector 7 by first light tomorrow. So he lets the statement hang in the air between them.
Oates tips them off about someone else who needs help, and Aerith pushes him off in the indicated direction.
It turns out to be a Shinra-but-also-not-Shinra investigative reporter sniffing around the community center for a story about the Angel of the Slums. It sounds to Cloud like some sort of smear campaign. Aerith doesn’t seem particularly interested in helping Damon find out who the “criminal” is. Cloud can’t say he is, either, but the gil is good and he’s finds himself curious about who this Angel is. So they do end up helping the Angel of the Slums instead—or, her emissary Mireille.
She’s clearly the Sector 5 professional gossip, but harmless. She’s also obviously screwing with the Shinra reporter in an effort to get him to leave the slums and the Angel alone, and Cloud finds it almost amusing how terrified Damon is at his “near-brush-with-death” at the Angel’s lair in Shinra’s old dump. They also recover a calling card with a thinly-veiled warning to the man.
“Well.” Aerith begins after the reporter has turned tail and run and Mireille has told them about the Angel’s next target—Don Corneo. “It’s getting late. We better head back.”
The day finally coming to an end makes him feel stranger than he anticipated.
Unsurprisingly, they’re interrupted on the way back by the Turk who they saw dropped off by chopper when they first arrived in Sector 5. Rude, apparently. He’s wearing dark shades and unlike Reno, the conversation between himself and Aerith make Cloud think she’s almost fond of him.
Rude is a brawler, and plenty challenging to subdue. Cloud is fully prepared to jump between his kicks and punches to defend Aerith, whom the Turks are obviously so fixated on. But it turns out that during their fight Rude mostly ignores Aerith in favor of focusing all his brute strength on Cloud. He occasionally tosses a sleeping spell in her direction and trips her a couple of times when she gets too close, but otherwise, Cloud takes the brunt of Rude’s aggression.
Which works fine. Makes his job as a bodyguard easier. But given the impression Cloud has gotten of the Turks so far, something doesn’t fit. It’s like they want to take Aerith, but not that seriously. And yet, Cloud gets the impression that two Turks tailing one florist is anything but not serious for Shinra.
Rude matches him punch for sword swing until Cloud really begins to feel the battle wear on him. Aerith gets her hits in when she can but Rude is playing incredibly defensive where she’s concerned. His opponent is putting up a brave front, but Cloud starts to see the exhaustion and slight delay to Rude’s movements as well.
Then, suddenly, when it seems the fight with Rude is coming to a head, his phone rings, breaking the tension. He talks so lowly into his device that Cloud can’t quite make out what is being said, but then the propellers of another chopper are whipping overhead.
To extract Rude from the clearing of junk they’d turned into their makeshift battlefield.
“Got someplace else to be?” Aerith snips.
Rude adjust his shades over the bridge of his nose and grunts out, “Apparently so.”
Then a rope ladder is thrown down and the Turk climbs on, no further ploy to take Aerith attempted.
“Go home and stay there,” Rude commands as the chopper slowly begins to gain altitude.
Aerith scrunches her nose at him, but Cloud picks up on the hint of a tease. “You know I can’t do that!” she calls up at him.
Rude says nothing else as the propellers of the helicopter make conversation impossible, especially since the ascent takes him out of earshot very quickly.
Cloud makes sure the chopper is in the sky and out of their field of vision before he looks back Aerith. He crosses his arms.
“Let’s go,” she tells him.
When they get back to Aerith’s house, she runs ahead to a patch of flowers up a stone path that leads to a small hill. He follows only to find her talking to the flowers about the day they’ve had. Cloud feels like he should have found the whole thing strange. Barret talks about hearing the Planet speak to him, and Cloud figures it’s all bullshit. But he finds he believes Aerith when she goes on to tell him that the flowers will eventually have something very important to tell them when the time comes.
Cloud can’t work out what it all means, but while Aerith has her back turned he gives it a shot. He conspires with the flowers that maybe he can learn to talk to her. Aerith isn’t fooled, because he apparently can’t get anything past her, but he pretends like he was talking to them about the same things she was.
Elmyra immediately scolds them when they slip back into the house for how long they took in town. Cloud doesn’t dare speak as Aerith makes apologies for the both of them and her mom immediately sends her upstairs to ready the room he’ll be sleeping in. Cloud feels awkward in a way he hasn’t felt in a long while, so he turns away from Elmyra and tries to focus on something—anything else.
“You’re a SOLDIER, am I right?”
Cloud swallows hard, looking back to face the woman. “Ex-SOLDIER.” he corrects.
He has a feeling where the conversation is going, and he’s proven right when she says the predictable. She asks him to leave in the night when everything is quiet, no fuss.
Cloud surprises himself with how violently and instinctually he feels the want to protest when he’s spent most of the day griping that getting back to Sector 7 is taking too long. He honestly didn’t hate spending time with Aerith while taking a few jobs in Sector 5 as much as he initially wanted to. And yet… part of him agrees that he’s still bad news for her, that she shouldn’t be involved with someone who’s helping Avalanche blow up reactors. That she shouldn’t be involved with someone like him who can barely talk to her properly.
He can’t in good faith refute Elmyra, but he finds he instinctually wants to, anyway. But before the discussion can escalate further, Aerith bounds down from upstairs and right into the middle of their talk. Her pep and happiness dissipates as soon as she realizes she’s walked into a tense situation, but Elmyra quickly redirects.
“I hope you’re both hungry!”
“Starving!” Aerith replies, taking her seat at the dining table.
In juxtaposition, Cloud finds his appetite has gone completely. But not wanting to make the conversation she interrupted known, he sits down beside her.
“You have to go by the Leaf House tomorrow,” Aerith tells her mom around a bite of roast braised in savory gravy and hearty vegetables that Elmyra served over mashed potatoes. “They made the most beautiful piece with the flowers we brought. Cloud picked them out himself, too.”
Elmyra takes a long drink from her water glass, having already finished her plate. “Oh, did he? I think I just might do that.”
Dinner has been civil, with Aerith doing much of the talking at the table about what they were up to, sans the most dangerous things.
Cloud just pushes his food around on the plate with his fork while they chat. He’s had a couple of bites to satisfy Aerith’s urging for him to eat his fill but now he’s just killing time before they turn in for the night. Honestly Aerith hadn’t been wrong while they were scaling the rooftops near the church—her mom’s cooking is great. But his mind is being pulled in ten different directions since Elmyra’s proposition.
“Isn’t that right, Cloud?” Aerith nudges his shoulder gently with her own to get his attention.
“Uhh, yeah.”
“Do you even know what I just said?”
“….”
Aerith begins to pout. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we started eating. Even more quiet than usual, I mean.”
Cloud sets down his fork. “I’m just tired, I guess.”
“You’ve both had a long day.” Elmyra reminds them. “If you’re ready to turn in, Aerith can show you to your room.”
If he hadn’t had that exchange with her before Aerith came back downstairs, Cloud would have no clue that Elmyra has any kind of problem with him.
“Ready to hit the hay?” Aerith asks. She sounds more subdued, but there’s still the slightest lift to her voice.
Under the table, Cloud’s fingers flex against his leg. “Yeah, just tell me which door it is. You don’t need to escort me.”
Green eyes roll beside him. “Oh, please, Cloud. You should know the drill by now,” she tells him, before a pause and a look at her mom. “I’ll be right back to help you clean up.”
Before Cloud can argue, Aerith grabs the hand that had been fidgeting against his thigh and pulls him from the table with it. She leads him upstairs and to the second floor where she stops. Her grip slackens after a few pregnant moments of quiet between them, and his hand falls from her smaller one.
“Yours is the door on the right,” she tells him.
Cloud looks at her, a bit at a loss of what to say. Seems like the flowers are giving him a raincheck on that front. Her eyes look like a much darker and deeper green in the dim light of the sconces fastened to the wall next to them. The straps of her leather choker dance along the neckline of her pink dress as she plays with her hair. It’s bashful habit he’s noticed her about her throughout the course of today. Cloud preoccupies himself with looking at the several picture frames decorating the second floor while Aerith tilts her head at him curiously.
“Aww, are you sad about having to tell me goodnight?”
His breath catches in his throat at the way she so easily slips back into the teasing. He presses his lips into a thin line. “Sure you don’t need me to help with anything else?”
He earns a smirk from her in reply at that. “Weren’t you exhausted just a minute ago? What, you wanna wash dishes with mom and I?”
Cloud huffs but doesn’t confirm or deny. But something does seem to crawl up the length of his spine at the image of the three of them at the kitchen sink—Elmyra washing, Aerith rinsing, and Cloud drying. It seemed both ridiculous and curious that he would be in Aerith’s home with her mom doing something so domestic.
“Relax.” Aerith tries to soothe him after his prolonged silence, laughing that wind chime-like laugh. “Just go get some sleep and we’ll see each other in the morning, ‘kay?”
Cloud feels suddenly conflicted. It’s time to say goodnight—goodbye as Cloud knows it to really be—but he can’t really do it properly for this being the last time they see each other. Not without tipping Aerith off about the conversation her mom had with him while she wasn’t in the room, anyway.
“Just wanna say,” Cloud mumbles, damn near close to losing his nerve. “I appreciate you helping me with the jobs earlier.”
Aerith’s face softens. “Cloud, you’re being really sweet to me again.”
“N-no, I just—”
She takes the opportunity to move in close to him, like she had when she had asked him to protect her from the first Turk. “You did a really good job today too, Mister Bodyguard. So many battles yet I’ve never felt so safe.”
Cloud is certain he’s very close to melting into the floorboards. “J-just doing my job.”
Aerith retreats back a bit and Cloud releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding “Uh-huh. A gig like any other, right?”
Hours ago, Cloud would have readily agreed, but now he can’t do anything but stand there and bite his tongue.
“Well, goodnight, Cloud.” Aerith continues. “You really did a great job helping everyone in town today. I know it probably wasn’t much gil, but—”
Cloud shrugs. “Yeah, well, I got paid in other ways.
Her smile comes back, this time with a wink. “A truly priceless reward.”
Cloud has never met anyone like her. She’s hard to shake off and even harder to get a grip on. “G’night, Aerith,”
She bounces past him, opening the guest room door for him and gesturing inside. “Knew that’d get a smile out of you. Sweet dreams. I’ll come get you in the morning and take you straight back, promise.”
Cloud didn’t realize he’d let the faintest of upturn of his lips slip. If this was the last time he saw her, he could live with it being one of his less bumbling conversations with her. When he’s certain both Elmyra and Aerith are sleeping, he’ll slip away and back to Sector 7. He has enough going on with Avalanche, Shinra, and helping Tifa, he doesn’t want to cause problems between a florist and her mother.
He enters the guest room knowing all of this and she closes the door for him, her eyes being the last thing he sees beyond the bedroom décor in here. It’s homey and he doesn’t see the harm in actually catching a bit of shut-eye.
“You boys made a trade—a normal life for power.”
That’s what Elmyra had said. Cloud isn’t sure what her point is or what it has to do with him being around Aerith, but he gets the feeling she’s talking from past experience. Whether it was her own or Aerith’s, he has no idea. What about Cloud protecting her daughter and making a few gil around the sector constituted him trying to force a normal life anyhow? And with who? He and Aerith have just met and he’s on his way back anyhow—he doesn’t understand the point of Elmyra’s protectiveness. He turns this over in his mind several times but gets no closer to answers that satisfy him.
Consciousness slips away not soon after.
Cloud dreams about visiting his own mom. She pesters him about finding a girl to settle down with. One who’s a little older and will keep him on his toes. Call him out when he’s being silly. He isn’t sure why he decides now of all times to remember that visit during his sleep, but when he wakes, he shakes it off. Cloud grabs his gear and slips downstairs, careful not to disturb Aerith who is sleeping next door.
He finds Elmyra waiting. Making sure he follows through with it.
“Don’t speak to Aerith ever again.”
Cloud agrees not to as soon as she asks, like it’s knee-jerk. Waking has broken more than one dream tonight, and Cloud is firmly rooted back in reality now.
“I’m sorry.”
Elmyra apologizes as he leaves, and she sounds sincerely unhappy. He doesn’t understand the urgency—this was always a temporary arrangement with Aerith. But if it will put her mind at ease and get him back to Sector 7 with no more delays, he figures there’s no reason to not go along with it.
She gives him directions back and he’s on his way.
When Cloud crosses the lush gardens dotting Aerith’s home and finds himself at the perimeter, he gives it all one last look. He’s reminded about how hard Aerith works to maintain this beauty. About the florist who talks to the flowers, who claims quitting is what she does best when the whole Sector benefits from the dozen plus roles she holds in their community. Kind, green eyes and a bright smile even in the dirt and grime of the scrapyards. A healing touch that feels electric, chemical. One that lingers, as he remembers earlier at the gravesite of the old man’s wife.
Cloud scowls.
Time to wake up, he reminds himself as he leaves Aerith’s home, sprawling and warm, at his back with Sector 7 in front.
The march through town is all insect noises and the heavy steps of his own boots upon the dusty ground as he makes his way to Sector 6 to cut through like Elmyra instructed.
He finds the Leaf House housemother is surprisingly still out and about, getting fresh air and soaking up the moonlight. She thanks him for being a budding florist and the kids’ SOLDIER hero. Then, she asks him to thank Aerith for her. Cloud agrees, knowing he won’t get the chance. The housemother can thank Aerith herself in the morning, but he presses on through the Sector towards his goal.
It already feels strange, not having Aerith dancing ahead of him, giggling and making her little observations. He passes the restaurant where she apparently plays waitress and finds it “fun.” She’s in her element helping these people in the same way she mentioned him being in his while in combat. She’s making the lives of people in the slums better, and she isn’t blowing up Reactors to achieve it.
He idly thinks that she and Tifa would like each other.
Cloud finally passes through the boundary of Sector 5, making his peace with the world he’s leaving behind.
Until it comes back to him.
A familiar shape hops out from the gymnasium of concrete and rebar that serve as the Sector walls. His insides leap but he does his best to pretend there isn’t a layer of relief that settles over him seeing Aerith move out from the shadows to throw a curveball in his path. With a smile and hand on her hip.
“Well, look who it is. Talk about a coincidence.”
“What are you doing here?” he asks. He really doesn’t understand her and tries his best to smother the gooey feeling in the pit of his gut.
“Waiting,” she answers evenly, as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why?”
She takes the opportunity to move in close, close enough where their noses are dangerously close to touching. The proximity of her makes his breath catch. “Because I’m not sick of you yet.”
The lump in his throat dips heavily, like he’s swallowed a stone, but he doesn’t have it in him to argue with her. He’s learning that it’s a pointless exercise, trying to talk Aerith out of anything.
“Lead on, then,” he tells her, conceding to wherever this path with her is taking him.
As she skips ahead of him, humming a tune he can’t place, the same splitting pain from the kids’ hideout returns. Except this time, there is no Sephiroth. In his place, something else scratches at the back of his head, something he feels like he remembers but knows he really doesn’t. Then, a strange wave of—sadness? Yearning? Elation? Whatever it is, it fills him to capacity and a lone tear squeezes from his eyes.
It’s a shock. Cloud can’t remember the last time he’s cried. What’s wrong with him?
“Cloud?”
Noticing that he’s fallen behind, Aerith rushes back to check on him. Of course she does. He swipes away the tear with a gloved finger before she gets to him. He brushes off her concern as quickly and adamantly as he can.
“It’s nothing.”
It’s the second time he’s had this feeling around her. Like he’s forgetting something important. A surge of strong feelings he can’t explain. Part of him wants to run away from the feeling, and another part of him wants to drown in it. It has a mind of its own, like it’s wanting to claw its way out from his skin desperately to reach for her. It’s inexplicable.
And it’s Aerith. Cloud knows now that he’s hunkered down too deeply to get back out. He finds he isn’t as upset about it as he should be.