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Aerith sits alone in the grass. The air is silent and still, and the faintest rays of light stream in from above where acid has eaten little pockets through the steel sky.
A grasshopper sits in her palm, eating sugar from the cup of her hand. She watches its tiny green mandibles saw back and forth as grains of white crystal disappear one by one.
There is nothing to distract her from this moment, this quiet little miracle.
When Aerith sneaks out to meet Zack in the middle of the night, she remembers the first time she ran away from home. Seven years old and her first act of defiance. She only got as far as the small pond across the footbridge from her mother’s cottage. Her mother—her new mother—brought out a storm lamp and a plate of cookies. Two hours passed before she found herself walking back through the door.
She remembers it clearly: Elmyra on the couch a little bemused, mostly worried. And beyond that, something else in her eyes: the uncomfortable fact that this mother needed her as her own child needed her. It was this recognition that made it all the more easy for Aerith to walk away in the years to come.
Zack’s body presses into hers. He pushes up against her until her back hits concrete. Manufactured grey stone shocks cold all down her spine.
They’re drenched in fluorescents, mako-powered street lamp buzzing green above their heads. Aerith pulls him closer, focusing on his heavy breath in her ear to drown out the voices, the millions and millions of souls she can hear beyond the ether endlessly clamoring for her attention. She pushes aside their collective neediness, exchanges it for the more immediate urgency in front of her, the warm body that grounds her in the present. The shape of his thigh between her legs, his fingers threading through her hair. It feels good to be needed this way. His arms, his back, his mouth—this, she can understand. This, she can satisfy.
When Zack walks out of her life, she doesn’t waste time asking why. People leave; it’s their right. This simple fact explains every loss in her life and determines her every step—it’s the only way she knows how to live. She comes and goes as she pleases, never once turning to look back.
Long legs and dark, dark hair. The slit up her dress, the precision of her fists. Even-keeled all the while. Tifa isn’t what she expected. There’s no harm in looking, Aerith tells herself, and privately, she wonders what it would be like to watch her come apart. The dress, in part, is to blame. After all, it’s her first point of reference—she can’t unsee it.
But it’s what’s buried between her words and silences that intrigues Aerith. She feels compelled to coax it out—a reaction, an expression, something, anything. It doesn't take long for her to imagine herself a ripple over still water. This isn’t exactly new territory—witnessing her effect on others has always brought her enjoyment. The invisible lines that separate people, she feels, exist to be prodded and toed and pushed. It requires a delicate hand, like dripping hot wax onto someone’s bare skin, watching every spill unabashedly, daring them to react, daring them to let her see them slip.
It isn’t until Tseng’s backhand knocks her to the ground that what she longs for finally emerges: dark eyes, knitted brows, small mouth twisted in worry, this portrait of indignation cutting through the buzzing static.
As Tifa’s shouts break over the shape of her name, a familiar flame of satisfaction ignites deep inside Aerith.
Who made the world?
In their windowless room, her mother tried her best to answer, painting a picture of a world she’d never seen. But all beautiful things die, she used to say, just as they are born.
When Aerith steps outside of Midgar, she witnesses firsthand the truth of her mother’s words. A breeze shudders through the branches of a tree and in one breath, releases its leaves in an exhalation of gold.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
They follow the trail of blood from town to town, through fields where blades of grass are tall enough to brush their cheeks, over rainsoaked plains where with their footsteps they track waterlogged patterns too chaotic to parse.
The man in black leaves a taste of metal in the air like a calling, and their leader, as though in a frenzy, as though hypnotized, urges them on.
It isn’t the promise of revenge, or even the promise of answers, that drives Aerith, but rather the newness of it all: the colors and shapes of leaves, the tastes and textures of fruit that swell and rot with each season, the moods of a wide open sky she can never seem to predict.
It’s this unpredictability that gives her purpose. The temptation of a new day is enough to quell her misgivings about the entire endeavor. Even if Cloud can’t recognize his lack of free will, even if all the others are blind to their own misplaced trust, so long as she decides to stay, it’s enough. That’s all that's ever mattered.
While the others begin to dismount their chocobos to make camp, Tifa appears distracted. Aerith sees the opportunity and swipes her saddlebag.
“Catch me if you can,” she shouts. She digs her heels into the chocobo’s feathery sides, urging the creature into a gallop. It’s worth it for the look on Tifa’s face alone.
“Aerith, that’s not funny!” But Aerith can hear the laughter in her voice. Tifa follows close on her heels.
They fly through meadows of soft grass burnished copper by the setting sun. The wind whips her hair loose from its braid. She is riding so fast that she considers, wildly, that she is not a body, but pure movement. This is how she’s always imagined herself: unfettered and free, hurtling towards a shapeless future with abandon.
Tifa catches up, and side by side, they run headlong into the horizon, elation and pure adrenaline carrying them all the way.
They come to a sudden stop at the edge of a marsh, and their chocobos buck them to the ground unceremoniously.
Aerith catches her breath, hands and knees planted in thick mud. A shadow glides across grey water. A cloud overhead, or—
“Watch out!” Hands grip her shoulders and yank her back roughly from the water’s edge. The giant serpent moves like a ghost. They hold their breaths until the shadow coils and winds away deeper into the marsh.
Her heart thunders in her ears. The thrill of a close call—it moves faster than blood.
Behind her, Tifa releases a heavy sigh of relief. Aerith waits for her to remove her hands from where they rest on her shoulders. She doesn’t. Aerith turns to look at her. Their eyes lock and the space between them grows taut.
Tifa is the first to break the thread. “You’re crazy,” she says, smiling. For what must be the first time, her face is clear of worry.
This is newness, too, Aerith thinks, and in this light, she is so beautiful.
Tell me, her mother used to say, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Tifa is always the first to rise. Her movements are careful and delicate as she extricates herself from her sleeping bag, her blankets, but Aerith has always been a light sleeper.
When they’re miles away from civilization and paved roads, Tifa is the designated cook. When they arrive at a town, she runs down their checklist of supplies, purchasing everything they need for the road ahead. She rations out potions, ethers, tinctures, herbs, makes sure their medical kit is well-stocked in antiseptic, gauze, thread.
On the rare days Tifa is too injured or ill to leave bed, it’s clear to Aerith that the party would fall apart without her.
Lately, Aerith has been keeping her company during her late-night watch shifts. As she watches Tifa watch the stars, she wonders what it’s like to feel so needed. What it’s like to want to be needed?
Tifa points to the constellations and gives them names. Aerith falls asleep on her shoulder and dreams of animals and warriors.
A few hours later, she wakes to low voices murmuring through a veil. She’s inside their tent, tucked warmly into her sleeping bag and without a clue as to how she got there. Cloud and Tifa are outside, their figures cast flat against the orange light of the dying campfire.
It happens again in Junon. This time, she awakes to find them sitting on the floor, profiles leaned close, whispering. At the sight of the narrow space between them, an unfamiliar sensation stirs in her chest. Tifa is the first to notice her presence. They both stop talking and turn their heads towards her direction. Heat spreads to her cheeks as she realizes she’s interrupted what appears to be an intimate moment. She burrows back into her pillow, feeling a little resentful, a little ashamed, though she’s not entirely sure why.
Later, when they’re in disguise on choppy waters, she finds Tifa alone on the far end of the deck.
“He promised to take me on the Highwind,” Aerith tells her. Tifa blinks slowly, dark lashes wet from the salt spray. “Oh,” she says. “That’s sweet of him.”
Aerith searches her face for something beneath that well-maintained veneer, but Tifa’s attention turns back to the ocean. Her hands grip the railing, eyes pensive and lost in thought, staring out into the churning blue.
Their first kiss happens in the quiet of a fire that’s never gone out. Exactly how many years the Cosmo Candle has burned, Aerith doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to know. Time is the last thing she wants to think about.
Destiny and duty have made themselves clear, but she will not face them today, not when she can lose herself in the scent of another. This is real, she reminds herself, and she anchors herself to details: Tifa’s breath, her sighs, a shy slip of tongue. Desperation settles into tenderness at which Aerith breaks away.
The next morning, Aerith clears the air: “We don’t have to talk about it.” She is mildly surprised at the look of relief on Tifa’s face. Aerith doesn’t ask if she enjoyed it or if she’d like to do it again, but three nights later, the answer is revealed in the privacy of their tent.
They make a habit of it, their hunger betraying them each time (hands under shirts, hitched breaths and gasping) but always stopping short of sex (though Aerith isn’t sure what for).
For once, she feels like taking her time. For once, she listens to what is being asked of her. If she listens closely, she can hear traces of her mother in the green, like the long-missing notes of a forgotten song.
Love comes in pieces, gratitude a collection of moments. Keep moving, keep running—it’s what she told herself was the truth until the shape of it shivered and broke and revealed itself a lie. No, became.
She doesn’t know exactly what a prayer is. But she does know how to pay attention. How to fall down into the grass.
They first have sex in Tifa’s ghost of a hometown. Aerith recognizes the need behind the grief in her eyes and offers what she believes is a fair substitute for comfort. During their first night at the inn, she leaves the door to her room open—a clear invitation.
She wants to give her something real. Show her that even inside this counterfeit architecture, they can make their own truth.
“I want to make you feel good,” she whispers.
When she touches Tifa, reaches inside her, she prays that pleasure is enough to overpower the mockery of her memories looming in the walls that surround them. In her mind, they’re making splinters from joinery, dust from brittle plaster.
If she feels Tifa slipping away, disappearing inside herself, she pulls at strands of hair, drags nails over skin, captures lip with teeth, all to bring her back. Whatever it takes to keep her here.
Afterward, It’s hard to look at her. Ambivalence hangs heavy in the air and as to who is the source, Aerith is uncertain. She’s never done well with indecision. Ultimately, the distance she places between them, she decides, is for Tifa’s sake, not her own.
Brown eyes turn their attention to blue. Cloud is a question mark. Tifa fumbles through dark corners for answers.
And all the while, the Planet cries.
It’s when they’re fighting that their bond becomes clear. However stilted their conversations, however awkward and charged their silences, in battle, Cloud and Tifa are in complete synchrony, every swing and parry, kick and dodge timed and executed with pure intuition: they understand each other.
Aerith has given up any pretense of usefulness—they’ve been robbed of their materia and she is without both her offenses and defenses. She’s better off staying out of the way. But as she watches Cloud and Tifa pummel razor-backed monsters, the one at her side escapes her notice. A single swipe and down she goes, knees and hands into dirt, the hard ground sending shockwaves up her bones. At first, she can’t locate the wound on her body. It isn’t until red begins to stain through the fabric of her skirt that she sees the ragged tear in her leg.
Once Cloud has lopped the head clean off the last of the beasts, Tifa joins her on the ground. Her brow is furrowed in worry. She glances up at Cloud.
“Let’s break for the day,” he says. The others set down their packs and prepare to make camp.
Tifa uncorks a potion. Aerith turns away and grits through the sting. Tifa’s hands move quickly, quietly. It doesn’t take long for Aerith to grasp the irony of this moment; it feels odd, this change in roles. Neither of them look at each other.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Tifa says, her voice low.
It’s a statement, not a question. One that Aerith resents, even if it’s true. But more than anything, she's surprised by this newfound boldness, enough that it catches her off guard. Up until now, she’d been counting on Tifa’s tendency towards self-repression. Another new and precious fact uncovered, like dusting off a jewel. In her own way, she’s proud of her.
Tifa takes her leg and moves it gingerly toward her lap. Aerith feels a little bit ridiculous, like a child. Tifa unrolls a strip of gauze and begins wrapping it around her thigh. Her touch is light, hesitant.
When she finally finds the resolve to look at her, really look at her, Tifa's expression is helplessly open. A knot forms in her chest. There’s nothing to apologize for, but before Aerith can stop herself: “I’m sorry.”
Tifa’s hands still. “It's okay,” she says quietly. “I just never know what you’re thinking.” A soft sigh and her fingers begin to move again, clipping the bandage in place. “You’re unfathomable to me.”
No, Aerith thinks. You’re the mystery. My little piece of wonder in this world.
When Tifa places a soft kiss on her knee, Aerith lets her.
She’s never wanted to be saved. Never fantasized about being rescued and swept away to a better place. Never needed anything from anyone, only ever needed for her own lungs to draw breath, for each breath to remind her of the sweetness of the air.
That she was capable of wanting more had never occurred to her.
Revelation always arrives too late. Time waits for no one and just now, the clock has revealed its face.
He is just a little boy and she will follow him anywhere. A missing piece to her past that for some reason will not fit. Why not leave the ashes where they are, Aerith wonders, and abandon the puppet to untangle its own strings. Truthfully, she fears the answer: that he means more to her than just a memory.
In Gongaga, two women learn to hate themselves anew, their self-erasure reverting them back into helpless girls. It’s something new that they now share. They’ve both lost their mako-eyed boys. The difference is Tifa won’t ever stop trying to find hers.
As though possessed, Aerith leans up, balances on her toes, and presses a kiss to Cloud’s surprised mouth.
With destiny nipping at her heels, it would be easy to justify this impulse. Perhaps she wants to ruin everything. Perhaps what she wants most is the choice to throw it all away, to deny herself the life she never knew she wanted and now knows she’ll never have. Spite is as strong a motivator as any. She can’t run anymore, but she can burn it all down, what little of hers is left that she can call her own.
In the distance, she hears a door open and shut. She wordlessly pulls away from Cloud and leaves him to his thoughts. He does not follow her and for that, she is grateful. She walks down the carpeted hallway back to her hotel room and finds the door unlocked, the lights on, and Tifa sitting on the edge of the bed, chewing her lip and staring at her hands.
Aerith waits for her to say something, even though she knows she won’t. When her theory is proved right, Aerith sits down next to her, removes her shoes, and begins to loosen her hair from its thick braid, fingers working quietly while in the background, the novelty ghost clock ticks with each passing second.
“You’re awake,” Aerith remarks simply. “I could have sworn you were asleep when I left.” It’s true; she took great care not to disturb her when she slipped out to meet Cloud.
“I was,” Tifa starts, the words coming out tentatively as though testing the coldness of water. “But then I woke up and you weren’t there, so I…”
So, she saw them. “Oh?” Aerith decides now is a good time to change into her sleeping clothes.
Finally, Tifa turns to face her. The mattress dips slightly from the movement. “Why?”
Aerith sighs. “Why? Why not?” It’s hard to look at her. She presses on. “Are you upset you didn’t get there first?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Though she does not mean for it to happen, the truth slips out. “Maybe I wanted to know how you feel.”
Tifa takes a second. “There are easier… you could just ask.”
But that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? Rather than accept this honest invitation, Aerith pivots, testing for blind spots. “You put everything aside for him. You think if you make him need you, he’ll see you, yes?”
From the looks of it, she’s hit a nerve, but it’s too late to turn the car around now.
“He’s the only history you have, so you cling to him. Doesn’t he deserve more than that? Don’t you? Who are you if people don’t need you? Do you even know?”
Tifa’s face crumples a little. At least now Aerith knows she matters enough to upset her.
It used to give her pleasure, hurting people this way. Knowing she could affect them like this. Every barb a reminder that the fault lay with them, that maybe next time, they ought not to get so close. And when she eventually did leave, she felt no regret—Aerith was free to come and go as she pleased, free to exit someone’s life as swiftly as she entered it. Destabilizing their world was her gift to them: a chance to recalibrate and reorient their lives around her absence. She’d always believed she was forcing people to ask themselves the question she’d been asking herself her whole life.
Except it feels different this time. As Tifa turns to hide her face, Aerith realizes she wants to be more than a spark, be something more substantial than a catalyst, a reactive force. She wants to mean something to her. Deep down, she knows she already does. The possibility frightens her, that she might be worth more than she’s ever allowed herself to believe.
Aerith leans forward and gently cups Tifa’s cheek until finally, they’re facing one another. She places a kiss to her forehead, her brow, near her cheekbones where it’s wet. Tasting salt on her lips, she murmurs her apologies. “I was jealous.”
A broken laugh. “Why?”
Moments later, they’re venturing back out into the park. The only place still open is the Round Square, so for the second time that night, Aerith climbs into the gondola. Except this time, she ignores the sights outside the window, instead choosing to watch Tifa as she takes in the wonders of the night, the reds, greens, blues, and golds alight and alive on her pale skin.
“I’m sorry I went out without you. I wish I could have seen this with you first,” Aerith admits. Tifa smiles and shakes her head. “That’s okay. I’m just happy you’re here with me now.”
It isn’t weakness to be necessary to others. She understands that now. The Planet has waited so patiently for her to come to terms with this truth.
But accepting one role means giving up another. Everything precious comes pre-packaged with the anticipation of grief. Every little thing that is beautiful must eventually be mourned.
She delays for as long as she can.
Honesty comes easily in the dark. With her lips so close to Tifa’s ear, Aerith has no trouble articulating how much she wants to please her. She teases her with her fingers, her mouth, watching her expression turn desperate with each ministration. You’re a good girl, she reassures her, you deserve to feel good. It’s okay to ask for more, she tells her, just say ‘please’ and I’ll oblige. And though she’s sometimes tempted, she never makes her beg.
Aerith likes to watch her break—the angle and twist of her back, the grimace of her pretty mouth as she tries and fails to hold in her cries—and with her unbroken gaze reminds Tifa that she’s safe, that it’s okay for her to come apart, that she’ll always give her what she can’t ask for with words. The needy sounds filling her ears are enough to go on, self-perpetuating as they give her permission to extract even more. I’ll give you everything, she thinks, and she does, again and again into the deepest hours of night, like drawing water endlessly from a well.
The grasshopper snaps her wings open and floats away in a flit of green, leaving her still-cupped hands bereft of color.
The duty that runs through her blood, that she’s run from all her life—the man in black hates her for it. Secretly, so does she.
The Planet expects the world of her, but: who made the world? Standing in front of the ancient mural, she now understands that he means to unmake it. Do it, she wants to say. Show the world that it, too, can be controlled, can be broken, can be made subservient to the will of just one single person brave enough to try.
Rejection is what made the man in black. Destruction, she believes, is the inevitable outcome of lack. It is loss and emptiness turned out towards the world.
As the temple collapses upon itself, untouchable history sucked into the void, she feels a thrill. As Cloud hands over the forbidden materia to the man in black, cataclysm condensed crystalline in the palm of his hand, she thinks: let him have it.
Then, Cloud is upon her. Aerith feels her lip split under the hard knuckle of his fist. Let him have it, let them all have it, she thinks. Let his hatred pummel the earth.
They’re laying in an open field under the wide blue lens of sky. It feels like a dream in that she can’t locate the exact place. Between one town and another, surely. The details don’t matter.
Tifa’s head is cradled in her lap. Aerith gently strokes her hair. The air smells like spring, maybe early summer. Something like anticipation. She watches dark lashes flutter (she must be dreaming) and memorizes the faint freckles across Tifa’s nose that the sun has so recently coaxed out from hiding.
There is nothing to distract her from this moment, this quiet little miracle.
In the end, she cannot face her. But it's this memory Aerith takes with her as she runs deeper into the ghostly forest, to where fate awaits her arrival with open arms.
As she feels her soul unravel from her body and begin its departure from the physical world, her mother’s words come to her once more:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
And, sinking into the river of green, caught joyful in the current, she answers with a question of her own: Tell me, what else should I have done?