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There’s a moment after Corneo falls—after a distant echoing thud, after Reno snaps his phone shut—where his eyes catch hers.
“Was that the company?”
“Yeah, they want us to find Cloud.”
Aerith holds her breath and his gaze even as Cloud reaches for his sword in her periphery, as Tifa steps in front of her with fists drawn. Holds and holds until he breaks first.
It lasts seconds but feels like a lifetime before he shakes his head. “Nope.” Turns without a backward glance, shielding his eyes against the setting sun. “Today’s our day off.”
And then they’re gone—he’s gone—just like that.
Never to be seen again.
+++
Or so he thinks, Aerith imagines viciously, slipping out of her futon after Tifa’s breathing finally evens out. Tifa sleeps like the dead once she actually falls asleep, but Aerith still tiptoes across the room, picks up her boots, and closes the door gently behind her. Luckily Yuffie is staying at her house for the night, and Cloud—the only other light sleeper of the group—is situated all the way across the hall. So after a quick wave to the receptionist, Aerith laces up and heads out into the night.
Downtown Wutai is an explosion of color and sound. Of buzzing neon signs and bustling pedestrian crowds and the occasional deafening roar of pachinko parlors as automatic doors open and shut on demand. Of hawkers and hosts peddling wares and increasingly seedier establishments with every determined step she takes. Of cigarette smoke that waters her eyes and lingers in her throat.
It’s strange how at home she feels despite the stimulation overload. It wouldn’t even take much effort to imagine a rusted metal sky overhead, separating her from the vast unknown above. She can’t see stars here either.
Maybe that’s what drew Don Corneo to Wutai, too.
Ick. She doesn’t particularly appreciate her brain’s comparison, so she shuts it off and navigates on autopilot from memory. Skids across slick city streets past the giant spiraling fountain in the central square, before turning into a cramped alleyway, its surrounding walls completely plastered over in ratty posters and faded graffiti.
A dead end at first glance, but Aerith marches on till she can’t, turns to the right and knocks three times directly over a torn up flyer with a turtle scrawled on the corner of it. Her fist meets metal instead of concrete, and the sound of it echoes distantly until there’s a sharp click. A pair of beady eyes appear in a small rectangular opening.
“Paradise,” Aerith says confidently, and waits for the door to swing open into a warmly lit hallway.
It doesn’t.
They must not have heard her. She clears her throat and tries again—“Paradise.”—louder and with a different inflection to see if that does the trick.
No dice.
Oookay. She balls her hands at her hips and draws herself up onto her tippiest toes to glare directly into narrowed eyes. “Look, you remember me, right? I was here earlier today with a big strong blond SOLDIER and—”
“I wasn’t.” Not even a blink!
“But the code word is paradise, isn’t it?”
“Was. Changes every midnight.”
Aerith glances quickly at her phone and scowls. “It’s only 12:04!”
Nothing.
“Well then how much to pretend I got here five minutes ago?” She reaches for her gil purse and frowns. Shit. Left it in the safe in Cloud’s room—along with the rest of the returned materia, in case of unrepentant sticky ninja fingers. The only things in her possession are her mother’s last gift tied up with Zack’s.
Shit shit shit. Maybe she can beg her way in. “Please, I can come back with money. A level two lightning materia? I won’t even be long in there, I just want to—” The window snaps shut and desperation pricks at her eyes, makes her chest ache.
She pounds on the door, three sharp raps and then another three, again and again, echoing echoing, till she loses count. Till her hands sting and her knuckles bruise. Till she can’t hear anything but the beating heart lodged in her throat.
Aerith thought she was prepared for this. Hadn’t she already been given one last chance to say goodbye? Wasn’t it more than she ever hoped possible?
Isn’t it enough that he’s still alive?
She backs into a corner, draws trembling hands to her chest, and breathes deeply, unevenly. It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s enough.
Enough.
She’s not a kid anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time. Shouldn’t be throwing tantrums because she wasn’t expecting to see him again.
Because she wasn’t expecting him not to look for her first.
Shit. She really thought that it—that she—meant something.
But before she can bring herself to move forward, the door swings open to a warmly-lit hallway, a familiar black suit—
“Aerith.”
—and a pair of shades.
Rude nods in greeting before continuing down the alleyway, and Aerith is so taken aback that the door slams shut before she can think to stop it. Shit!
By the time her feet start working again she’s lost sight of Rude, but thankfully he’s just around the corner.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” she murmurs, slipping next to him as he exhales toward the ground. The same smell, the same brand.
“Didn’t always.” He shrugs and taps the ash off. “Never understood why he did, either, till he couldn’t.”
“Can I see him? Can you give me the code word—”
“No.”
Oh. Her eyes prickle all over again she’s so stupid—still a kid after all—no wonder he doesn’t want to see her.
“He’s not here.”
She blinks the wetness away. “What?”
“Said he wanted to be alone.”
“Why?”
Another shrug. “You’d have to ask him.”
“But where—”
“Rude, we’re up next for Kara—what are you doing here, Avalanche scum?!”
Elena’s eyes are honey brown and full of suspicion as she crouches low into a fighting stance. It’s strange, Aerith thinks, a Turk who has never known her, who has never been forced to protect her, who has never needed to pretend with her. Her honesty is refreshing.
“Elena…your voice is too loud. No need to shout from the mountains.”
“Ah, apologies, sir!” She immediately snaps ramrod straight, saluting Rude with a firm hand.
He drops his cigarette to the floor and grinds it down with his toe. “…We’re on vacation.” Cracks his neck and heads down the alleyway without a backward glance.
“Er, sorry, Rude. But the Ancient…” Elena trails off, glancing hesitantly between his retreating form and Aerith’s best disarming smile.
“She was just leaving.”
And then they’re gone, leaving Aerith with just the distant echo of a door slamming in their wake—
Mountains…
—and, maybe, a code word.
How could she ever have forgotten?
“Thanks, Rude,” Aerith whispers, before sprinting off.
+++
Reno’s never told her a single true thing about himself that she didn’t have to learn on her own.
Well, that’s a lie. He told her exactly one true thing about himself when she desperately begged for it; she just didn’t believe it back then, couldn’t wrap her head around it.
He’ll be seven and a quarter soon.
And when he wants to be alone, he goes for the high ground.
On their way to Wutai, Yuffie often boasted that its Pagoda of the Five Mighty Gods was the tallest in all of Gaia. Which is true only because no other pagoda survived Shinra’s onslaught. But the highest point in Wutai isn’t there anyway.
It is, fittingly, where this night started. The Da Chao Statue carved into the Wutai mountains.
There’s enough light pollution from the city to navigate up winding pathways and treacherous drops for quite a while, but as her breath grows labored and light-headed, so too does the night fall darker. After one close call too many—and the sound of rocks skidding off the edge echoing, echoing—Aerith takes out her phone and navigates by its weak light.
She smells sickly sweet smoke before seeing a shock of red hair between stone-carved fingertips. Snaps her phone shut and runs the rest of the way guided by waxing moonlight to stand atop the head of the first great emperor of Wutai.
He must have seen her coming. Smoke curls lazily from his lips, following the path of his gaze toward the sky. “Whatcha doin’ here, Princess?”
Aerith hates to admit it, but it hurts. She really thought she was more than just some alien princess to him after all this time.
Still, she can’t back down now. “Can I talk to you?”
No reaction.
She clears her throat and takes a deep breath. “I said—”
“Heard ya the first time.” He doesn’t even do her the courtesy of looking down at her. “Nothin’ ever stopped ya before.”
He’s right.
So she marches closer to the base of the hand, feels around for a foothold, and begins to climb. It’s easier as an adult in some ways. Her limbs are longer, muscles stronger, she can reach higher than ever so this distance feels more surmountable than the church or even her own rooftop ever did. She’s breaking a sweat by the time she can clearly see the sharp angles of Reno’s profile, but overconfidence falters when her foot does—
The sound of rocks skidding off the edge echoing, echoing…
—and seconds before her hand follows, he grabs it and roughly yanks her up against him.
When the adrenaline clears her veins, all that’s left is the sound of her hammering heart, and the echo of his beating against it.
“Th-thanks,” Aerith murmurs, clinging to his jacket, a lifetime of gratitude welling up in her throat. He doesn’t reply but he also doesn’t push her away, smokes with his right hand and lets her hang on until her legs stop trembling.
There isn’t much room between even two giant stone fingers, and gravity thwarts every attempt to scoot further away, so she settles for being keenly aware of his thigh pressed against hers. It warms her all over despite the cool mountain air. Despite his cool indifference.
All she sees is her periphery is a single red crescent and rings of wispy smoke puttering on and on. He looks the same as ever, but smells different. Like candied strawberries. “I thought you quit smoking.”
Puff puff. “I’m vaping.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” That’s what Cid said, at least.
Reno tilts his head all the way back—so far back she’s afraid he might fall—and releases a full dragon’s breath of pink smoke. “That it?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what ya wanted to talk to me about? Came thundering up a mountain in the middle of the night to play doctor and yap about my life choices?”
“No, I just—”
“All right doctor princess, give it to me straight,” he wheezes, snickering and muttering and shaking his head. “How long do I gotta live?”
“A long time.” That gets his attention. “You’re gonna live a really long time.”
“…Nah. Nope. Nuh uh. No way, you really…?”
Brows tangled, mouth slackjaw, eyes wider than the moon. He looks so dumb that she can’t help but break first. “Of course not. What am I, a doctor?”
“You little shit.”
Aerith laughs because it’s funny, because it’s sad, because it’s bittersweet. “But it’s not too farfetched. There were doctors among the Cetra.”
“Oh yeah? Where’d you learn that, Shitbird University?”
“Cosmo Canyon.” The stars were so much brighter there, so full of hope and promise. “They could harness the power of the lifestream because they were attuned to it, but they didn’t use magic to solve everything. Why would they abuse a gift so graciously given to them? Instead they learned to use the Planet’s abundant blessings, to nurture and care for themselves and for her in kind.” Aerith prattles on, all the things she learned about those who came before her, those who left her behind. Which was not much at all, really. Nothing about how to save the Planet from those bent on its destruction. Not a thing about her mother’s useless materia. A patchwork history with no answers in sight.
Because the Cetra couldn’t see the future—of course they couldn’t. They didn’t see Jenova coming. And she? Can barely even see a path forward for herself most days. How is she supposed to fight a fate that’s already been lost by an entire civilization of her?
So it should be enough that he’s here now. Enough that she gets one more moment, one last chance at a memory before the world burns, but Aerith has always been inherently selfish, greedy and desperate for more.
It’s nothing but her vain wish that Reno lives on and on and on.
That they both do.
(Maybe that’s what she liked best about him, that he always called out her insufferable humanity.)
Aerith doesn’t realize she’s trembling till his hand catches hers, till his thumb sweeps over bruised knuckles and she winces at the sting of it.
“It hurt much?”
It does, but she doesn’t want to admit it. Doesn’t want him to let go. “No.”
“Good.” Smoke waters her eyes and lingers in her throat. “But it’s all right if it does.”
His eyes were so confusing to her as a child. Not quite blue like the skies in her picture books and not quite gray like the metal underplate and not much green like her own. A strange combination of all of the above that she could never reference or replicate, that muddied in paint, but on him somehow always gleamed catlike even in the dark.
It’s a color she knows now that she’s free, now that she’s seen so much more of the Planet’s beauty. That hazy space where dusk sky meets mako sea, a distant horizon that’s always just out of reach no matter how hard she tries.
Still, she wants to try. Envelopes his hand with both of hers and admits the truth. “I just wanted to see you.”
Reno blinks slowly, lazily, a flickering horizon, before the corners of his mouth pull taut. “To see me, huh?” He pulls his hand away in a huff of pink smoke “Figured you saw enough of me last time.”
It stings. “What?”
“S’why you left first, isn’t it?”
What on Gaia is he talking about? “You left first!” Left before she could say a thing, left without looking back once—without coming to look for her. So she thundered up a mountain in the middle of the night to chase after him!
“Don’t mean today.”
If not today, then— “Oh.”
Gongaga.
The last time she saw him. The last time she thought she would ever see him. They were chasing the same goal, the same madman, but Shinra had unlimited resources. Surely the Turks would always be one step ahead of them. So she made a selfish choice to live in the moment.
“Yeah, oh,” Reno mutters, jostling his leg, warm friction against her thigh that sparks vivid memories of his body pressing into hers, his touch searing her skin, lingering in her bones, desperate and overwhelming. His voice in her ear, damp and breathy, cracking as he called her name. As the cicadas hummed on and on and on…
So the reason he wanted to be alone today, the reason he didn’t seek her out was because of Gongaga? Because Reno thought that it—that he—didn’t mean something to her?
He’s just as stupid as she is!
“Are you fucking laughing right now?” The absurdity of it seems lost on him, however.
“No—haaahaha—I—”
“Fuck this, I’m outta here—”
“Reno, wait—”
She scrambles to keep him in place, a tussle that ends with her arms around his neck, her legs across lap, and his hands braced between carved fingers to keep them both from toppling over. His vape pen isn’t as lucky, smashes to pieces somewhere below, echoing, echoing…
“Sorry.”
“No, ya ain’t.”
“I wanted to stay.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I mean it—”
“Like you’d stay with his folks? You’d stay with just about anyone, huh?”
He throws her words back in her face with all the grumpy petulance of a child, but all it does is prove that he listens to her. Always has, always heard her even if he didn’t make a show of it. Remembered her words with maybe the same kind of reverence she always remembered his.
“That’s different.”
“Bullshit.”
“I would have been staying for them.”
“How’s that any different?”
“Because you’d never ask, Reno.” Because she would have stayed with him simply because she wanted to, followed him around all the time because she wanted to, would have gone to Shinra willingly with him if he—
“What if I did?”
—hadn’t stopped her.
Oh.
They’re not kids anymore, so she leans in and tastes stale strawberry smoke, feels it burn against her tongue.
“I’d think the world was ending. Or that you were.” She laughs into a sob, smothers it against his chest, and this time he joins her. Because it’s funny, because it’s sad, because it’s way too fucking bittersweet.
“But I’ve gotta live a long life, huh?” He mutters eventually, pressing the point of his chin sharp against the top of her head. “Doc’s orders.” One arm settles warm and heavy around her waist. “You really wanted to stay?”
“At least long enough to see the sunrise.” She winds the tip of his ponytail around her pinky with a sigh. “But Cloud decided we should leave before daybreak to get an early head start on you three.”
“And ya couldn’t get caught conspiring with the bad guys, huh?”
“Which means it’s your fault I had to leave early, huh?”
“Well shit,” he wheezes, draping his other arm over her legs, leather fingertips inching under the hem of her dress to skate circles over her knees. “Leaving early today, too?”
“Nope.” Aerith shivers involuntarily and yanks on his ponytail to distract herself. “Since the Turks are on vacation and all.”
“Good.” His eyes scheme catlike in the dark. “Gives us time.”
“Time for—” But she doesn’t get to finish her sentence because one hand snakes under her knees while the other splays over her ass and then she’s shrieking as he kicks off from the mountain to skid all the way down the side of it.
She’s still shrieking when he lets her onto her feet.
“Geezus, you’re loud as ever.”
“You could have warned me!”
“Would’ve screamed louder if you knew it was comin’.” She puffs her cheeks to bursting but concedes he maybe has a point. “Sides, I didn’t wanna wait for your ass to figure out how to get down by yourself.” He tugs on the tip of her braid before heading down the slope without a single backward glance. “C’mon, Aerith. There’s a tea house on the other side of this mountain that makes a mean chocolate spice cake. And their view of the sunrise is unreal.”
“Wait did you just say—I said wait!” He doesn’t wait, but does slow down just enough for her to catch up, to stretch her arms out and reach for his hand. “How do you even know about a tea house on a mountain, anyway?”
“It’s classified.”
+++
“Reno, what’s your phone number?”
“It’s class—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Aerith rolls her eyes, snatches his phone from across the table and quickly types in her digits and her name. “Well luckily mine isn’t.” Adds a crown emoji to the end of it.
“If ya didn’t put yourself down as Brat I’ll never be able to find you.”
“Har har.” She’s seconds away from blocking Tseng’s number—serves him right—but is distracted by a flicker of light.
“C’mon.” Reno clinks his lighter shut and pushes the plate closer. “Make a wish already.”
It doesn’t smell as good as Mom’s, but still Aerith inhales—the scent of chocolate and spices, of strawberry candy and melting candle wax—and blows just as the sun begins to rise over the horizon.
He’s right.
The view is unreal.
“…So whatcha wish for?”
“Don’t you know?” Aerith smiles and snatches the lighter from his hand to relight the candle before pushing the plate back over toward him. “It’s classified.”