Chapter Text
Her name isn’t Lover but it’s what she asks them to call her.
It’s a smart name for a Honey-Girl, one that looks fitting in the gaudy cursive lights which project it. Those who are new know what services to expect from her, and those who are regulars use the name with an enrapturing familiarity. Even Andrea utters it with such reverence, or perhaps it is simply the way he always speaks as a keeper of a hive.
The first time he meets Lover she is just shy of 18.
With large doe eyes and a charming smile she asks to audition for a place. Her face is familiar, and so is her hair, but it takes months before he connects the two. At the time thinks that he wouldn’t forget someone with such a distinguishable feature - blazing tresses coiled stubbornly around one another.
“This isn’t a place for kids,” and when she speaks he can hear a lilt of an accent he can’t exactly place. It intrigues him, for Andrea is not ignorant to the countries and cultures of the world, far from it. He likes to think himself an adventurer, inspired by the art of dance, he’s traveled to study the movements of other cultures seeking inspiration for his own choreography. He likes cuisine and song and clothing from all around and thinks himself an amateur anthropologist for his pastime.
Lover’s accent, to him, is the voice of someone who has grown traveling. Even her appearance is a hybrid design.
Her fawn skin is of someone indigenous to Costa de Sol, her eyes reminiscent of Wutains and her smile is like nothing he’s ever seen before - because though smiles he believes are universal - her’s is not. Her canines are just a little sharper than they should be and the full lips curl like elastic when she yawns.
When she responds he hears a little Junon in her nouns and a little Kalm in her sentence endings with that same something he’s never heard before.
“I can dance. Please, let me show you,”
He’s not sure what makes him agree, he’s not trying to get in trouble for minors on his property (though for Wall Market it’s hardly a first) for he has a reputation in this cesspit of a sector. Andrea knows the Honey-Bee Inn is one of the most established and respectable escort inn’s in Midgar. Girls dream of working with him, both day and night shifts, the waiting list for auditions are near-infinite and his expectations are even more impossible to achieve.
All because he chooses to treat his workers with respect.
It’s disappointing how Wall Market sometimes is, men allergic to money as they favour objectifying their staff.
Despite it being unfair to offer an opportunity outside of waiting lists and weeks of anticipation but Andrea finds himself easily acquiescing. Perhaps it’s the interest of her name, or the familiar look to her - but he allows her the space to perform and it’s an audition that will haunt him for years to come.
-
She calls herself Lover but there’s another name Aeris knows her best by.
Asen Lovelace has grown in ways Aeris couldn’t have comprehended in the photos she’d sent.
For starters she’s taller than she thought. The limbs she’d assumed were thin are lean and sinewy, the belt wrapped around her left bicep alone would wrap around her own wrists twice fold. It suits her, these defined curves, it suits her a lot better than the pathetic arms she’d known growing up. Besides that there is more warmth to her face, a red glow humming just beneath her maroon skin and Aeris wonders if Asen still fishes out cucumbers in her sandwiches or if her eating habits have changed as much as her face. There’s a cut on her lip barely visible to the naked eye and another on her cheek that faintly bisects a nevus to the side of her eye.
Then there is her hair, a staple piece to her appearance, it has grown thicker than Aeris thought possible, on her head and faintly on her arms. She remembers the first time her hair grew when they were kids, how itchy Asen complained her scalp was as if it burned through her skin. It was unusual - for hair to grow so late in one's life - Aeris imagined Shinra’s treatment had something to do with it.
In spite of all these changes when their gaze met and her friend’s eyes softened, Aeris could still see the girl who would vault over slum roofs and abandoned churches.
Asen has changed her name more times than Elmyra cared to count - but - even then it’s comforting to know some things haven’t changed and as Aeris’ fingers trace the battered print of a circus poster, she only wonders what Asen is running from this time.
-
Her name isn’t Lover - and for that he does not trust her.
It is clear that Aerith knows her by another name, in the way she tilts her head in question, thoughts clouding her eyes before she finally responds.
Lover she calls herself. As if she were something all desired. As if she has love to give. Or perhaps she is calling herself by what she wants most.
He’s heard Aerith tease him about something like that. Manifesting. Introducing something into one's life through a repeating phrase or word. She’s asked if his mother wanted her son’s heads in the clouds, perhaps it is the reason for his quiet and brooding attitude. He spent the better half of that day somewhere between his memories and Sector 5 slums. He thought about gods of strife and hatred, and what it means to be loved before sleep claimed him.
Though, as they are now, they cannot afford to be distracted. He cannot afford to be distracted. Tifa has thrown herself into a ring of starving, obnoxious wolves and as much as she can look after herself Cloud cannot shake off that feeling of dread which looms over him.
So he treats this newcomer with more spite than he had Barrett, more anger, and a little more of that fear he could never reason with. The same fear which has lurked the back of his mind since he escaped SHINRA with…
Cloud winces as the stubborn pain of yesterday's migraine returns. When it fades it is Lover staring at him with a look akin to pity that has Cloud feeling sick.
“Got something to look at?”
She hums in dismissal before she waves her hand as if she were swatting a fly.
The full moon is out today, sailing behind black clouds against midnight - or so he thinks it does behind the metal sky.
There isn’t much time left.
-
He calls her Darling, there’s no endearment when he says it, or at least any endearment that would garner such a pet name. No, Rude speaks of Darling in the same manner one would call a moniker. He says it with a little bit of startlement, surprise slipping out of his lips like dawn - before it’s quickly gone.
He almost misses her between the droves of night owls and the pulsing light of the club - but he’d be an idiot to miss the hue of such hair in any setting.
“Darling?”
“I go by Lover now,” she bares her teeth a little in amalgamous smile, as if something pains and entertains her simultaneously. It’s unusual, seeing the girl at a place like this as if it wasn’t too long ago she was wrapped in ribbon hanging from the ceiling bar of a circus. Reno, to neither of their surprise, is completely oblivious to her presence, his eyes enraptured by the tan brunette sitting prettily on his lap. Rude takes a sip of his drink as he watches her stand before him. It’s clear she’s waiting for her friend to get bored of her partner, he has time to catch up.
The more he thinks about it the more he fights off a laugh at the bottom of his throat, she looks like a pissed off kitten watching her owner ignore her, with arms folded against her chest and an expressive scowl. He thinks that perhaps he doesn’t fight the urge hard enough, not when a humoured hum escapes him.
She’s very different from her partner. Rude allows himself a little nostalgia as he leans back. At least until she shatters it all.
“How is Danger? Did he-”
“He is-”
Dead. She’d said.
There were many ways to break such news to people, some would sit the other down and explain, others would cry against their shoulder or hold their hand. Darling, apparently, was neither, she was an informer beyond being a performer. In the moment when she tells him, the features of her face settle like a veil. That same demure smile which was previously embellished in face paint and rhinestones could not correspond with the girl standing before him. If he weren’t a better man, a better Turk, Rude would have missed it.
But he is better. Even if he doubted it at times.
Before the bartender can slip past her she snatches two drinks and hands one over to Rude with a wink, she’s blasé in ignoring the irritated look of the man and it is he who has to send away the bartender with a stern and vicious look.
Unconventional in life and unusual in stance Lover was constantly performing, and Rude realises it far too suddenly.
“I’m sorry to hear,” and he is for the boy once attached to her hip who always seemed to have more life than what his body could contain, teasing both her and anyone within his radius with a dazzling smile. He remembers the embarrassed blush of his partner as he retorts back to the laughing teen for Danger was charming in a boyish daring manner, armed with enough charisma to incite a bet between the two Turks who were instructed to recruit him - and win at that.
“In Junon, V 0002/02/01.”
So he died in the crossfire of AVALANCHE and SHINRA and there’s something unspeakably terrible about that. They both know it from the look between the two.
Rude himself is glad he didn’t stumble upon his corpse that day.
“My apologies and again my condolences,”
It is not she that breaks the silence, but the brunette who slaps Reno. He doesn’t miss the relief which blooms her features when she does, nor the teasing smile she sends her friend as the girl (Belle of whom Reno calls after) grasps her wrists and storms off.
Rude spends the most of his night placating his partner before he speaks of who they’d bumped into.
-
Please Enter a Name.
The console asks her and in this moment she hesitates.
It’s far too loud in the Golden Saucer, she hates that it is exactly what Danger had described to her growing up. The flashing lights and the promise of escapism. Though all it seems to do now is taunt her.
In her past life her name was chosen by a woman who chose her - though nowadays those memories are more fleeting than she desires.
She remembers a name that isn’t hers, the first meaning planetary - he’d told her. She had told him his last meant steadfast, unmovable. She’d told him that under the stars, their backs against an oil stained blanket lying over a mountain of scrap.
She knows she loved this boy, later a man, loved him more than she could ever tell him. Then she died.
Please Enter a Name.
It asks politely, demurely, as if not knowing the weight of what it has confronted her with.
The familiar burn of her tattoo singes against her vertebrae at the memory.
She is now Asen Lovelace, Darling and Lover.
She hopes to never be Subject P again.
“Lover?” Tifa asks, concern printed on her brow.
Lover has just as many names as she’s had lives and for that cannot tell if she grants herself lucky or doomed.
Instead she types two letters into the console, an ‘m’ and an ‘e’ for it doesn’t matter what name she chooses, because despite what she or anyone else thinks, she can only be herself.
“I’m okay, let’s play,”