Chapter Text
Sephiroth has a few free days in between missions. He is trying to spend at least one of them with Aeris, but she won’t pick up her phone. He tried calling her several times and left one voicemail, but she never returned his message. He refuses to leave any more than that, afraid to come across as too…aggressive? Needy? Even he knows how annoying the excessive calling might be if it is unwanted.
However, it is odd for her not to answer, much less to not return his call. He tries not to let it bother him though. She might be busy. Maybe, she had worked too many hours, - something he can relate to - and is trying to catch up on sleep and personal affairs. There’s still much he doesn’t know about her. She might have other people in her life or other obligations to divide her time between.
Or maybe he’d done something to offend her.
The thought spurs him to check his phone again, but there are no missed calls or unread messages. Disappointment sinks into his chest, and he slumps his shoulders forward, deciding that he doesn’t like that feeling at all. It had been nagging at him all throughout the day, so he had been making efforts to distract himself from reflecting on it. Unfortunately, his friends are both occupied with other obligations, leaving him to deal with his restless thoughts alone. Why is he so concerned with this? He wonders. He’d never cared about this sort of thing before. It seems silly to him to care now, but maybe it’s just the not-knowing-if-he-did-something-wrong aspect.
Nevertheless, he has other problems to deal with now. The one call he received today was Hojo throwing a vague “we need to talk” line before he promptly hung up, which means he wants to talk in person. Wonderful.
When Sephiroth walks into Professor Hojo’s lab, he frowns, immediately sensing that he’d called him in here to reprimand him for something. There are multiple potential reasons for this, so he does not know which to prepare himself for. Hojo is scowling over a notebook, with his hand cupping his chin.
“We need to talk about your spending habits,” he says, not looking up from his work.
Oh. Just that…
“Ok.” Sephiroth doesn’t look at him either. Instead, he walks over to the bookcase and starts pretending to look at some old model aircrafts.
“You know I could care less what you do with your credit card, but I have to hear about it from my superiors when you decide to go on one of your little spending rampages,” Hojo says.
“I found out what the Turks are being paid. I just don’t think it’s fair that they make way more money than we do. SOLDIER work is specialized and carries much higher risks,” Sephiroth says, having been ready for this argument.
Hojo looks up at him and frowns. “So, you run up your credit card in retaliation? Need I remind you? The Turks do not live on campus. Since their needs are not provided for directly by the company, it stands to reason they should be paid higher wages to afford living. Shinra provides housing, clothes, food, and all other expenses for SOLDIERs on top of paying you a salary. You got the better end of the deal, so don’t even start complaining about that.”
“What if I don’t want that? What if I want to live off campus and have control over my own money? Can I become a Turk?”
Hojo lets out a sardonic laugh. “How are you going to manage an entire budget when you can’t even manage a single credit card allowance?”
“I can. I just don’t want to.” He folds his arms and looks down at Hojo, ready to push the argument further because he is in that kind of mood today. Any other day, he would have agreed to decrease his spending and move on.
“As for becoming a Turk, the answer is no. You can’t just unbecome a SOLDIER, and why on Gaia would you want to?” He scoffs and shakes his head. “That is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”
“It’s awful living here. I hate it…” Sephiroth mutters.
He waves him off. “Enough of your incessant moaning. You are a spoiled brat with everything handed to you. If you are not satisfied now, then nothing will ever satisfy you.”
“That’s not true. I do everything I’m supposed to do, and I hardly have time off. I want to be away from work when I’m not on the clock. I’d like to be around other people sometimes.”
“You have friends within your elite SOLDIER circle. That should be enough. I don’t see the issue.”
“Only two friends.”
Hojo slams down his notepad. “I know exactly what this is about. I’ve heard the rumors about your escapades with a certain girl from the slums. A prostitute at that! The lowest of them all. I refused to acknowledge such nonsense, but now I wonder…”
“She’s not a prostitute.”
“Ah, so it is true! I regret to inform you that any woman who works for Andrea at the Honeybee Inn is a prostitute. If she’s told you otherwise, she’s a liar.”
“She doesn’t really work there; she only sings in the lounge every once in a while.”
“Right.” Hojo looks at him, unconvinced. “No matter, you should not be interacting with civilians. You know the rules. We need not have a repeat of that little accident in the lab years ago…”
“I was 4 years old. You can’t hold that over my head forever! I have complete control over myself now. And what do you care about the life of a ‘prostitute’ anyway?”
“I don’t!” Hojo snaps, turning to him. “But you do not need to be lowering yourself to such degrading standards. You are to leave that girl alone. I don’t want to hear any more of the gossip surrounding you nor your annoying bargaining. It’s not going to happen.”
Sephiroth clinches his teeth, suppressing the violent thoughts crossing him. The true test of his mental fortitude is resisting the urge to put his suppressors in their places. He could do it so easily, but what would that prove? Only the point everyone makes against him - that he’s meant to be feared. Besides, loath as he is to admit, he still depends on Hojo. He acts as the medium between him and the rest of Shinra officials who refuse to acknowledge him. He does not trust Hojo, but he is the closest thing to an ally he has in terms of the people in power.
But if they believe he will be complacent, then they have another thing coming.
“Fine!” he says. “You won’t hear of it again.”
“Good. See to it that I don’t.”
Aerith measures her time in captivity by the number of meals delivered to her door. If that is anything to go by, then five full days have passed. The only positive of being in Shinra’s custody is that she no longer worries about starving. That dizziness she had grown accustomed to had gone away. ‘At least, there’s that,’ she tells herself whenever she falls into a depression.
Everything she had been through up until now feels like…a waste. After she worked so hard to be inconspicuous! If Tseng stays true to his word, which she has never known him to do otherwise, then there is still hope of her making it out alive and stopping the calamity before it happens. She has time, but not much.
She had wanted to infiltrate Shinra’s quarters so badly, but that seems like a dead end now that they found her first and branded her a prisoner. She needs to get to Vincent in Nibelheim to warn him of what is to come, but it is way too far without transportation. Same with Nanaki in Cosmo Canyon. Cloud and Tifa will still be children, but Vincent will be no different than he was in her timeline. Maybe…maybe…Cid will be the most accessible, but won’t he still be a Shinra loyalist?
The door cracks open. Hojo enters the room, and her stomach does this sickening flip as she recognizes him. He has less wrinkles, but the corners of his mouth are set in that downward turn which makes it look like his face is frozen that way. She tenses as he adjusts his glasses and walks closer to her glass capsule, watching her in that scrutinizing way of his. She fights the urge to cross her arms over her chest and hunch into herself.
“Well, I see that Tseng and my assistants did not exaggerate a bit when they informed me of your strong resemblance to your sister - and nearly identical resemblance to your missing niece.” He stands a few feet away, appraising her.
Self-conscious, she rubs her crusty eyes. She still has dried make-up and flecks of glitter caked in the corners, and her hair is extra frizzy and tangled from laying down for so long.
“Though, I can see the difference,” he says, disgust in his tone as he notices her short dress and disheveled appearance. “You look like a cheap version of your sister. You lack her class and grace, but I suppose Ifalna was unmatched in those categories.”
“Hey!” She clenches her fists at her sides. “It’s not like I have many options here!”
Offended, she bites her tongue from saying more. She can’t help her financial circumstances. If she had the choice, her closet would be full of pastel-colored, floral-printed sundresses. It is her signature look, after all. She may have a different style from her mother, – she still remembers the rich colors and bold fabrics of her beautiful dresses – but she would never choose to look like a Wall Market street walker. A poor one at that!
“No matter,” he says, waving her off. “Its all to the same end.”
“And what end would that be?” she asks, suppressing a shiver.
His beak-like mouth breaks into a wide smirk, showing too many teeth for her comfort. “I’m glad you asked. The company has the idea that you may be able to assist in finding the lost Cetra. I, however, think you’d be just as good of a replacement for her. I don’t care if they find her.”
“What do you mean by replacement? What is my niece’s obligation, who is just a child by the way, to the Shinra Corporation?”
“Being a Cetra, you must know your DNA is special. I could do so much with it. Preserve it. Enhance it. Especially since you are full-blooded, unlike your niece…well, allegedly,” he adds, eyeing her with suspicion.
This time, she fails to suppress the shiver, but she refuses to show her fear any further than that. She stares back at him, unflinchingly. Long experience with Hojo has taught her that the best thing to do is to just let him talk and reveal as much as he will as she calculates her next move.
He notices her shiver and smirks again. “Oh, don’t worry, my dear. It would be for the benefit of your people who are two deaths away from extinction. And you’ll be treated far better here than you were on the streets. No longer will you need to strip on stage, defiling your image for meager scraps of food.”
“I wasn’t stripping…” she mutters, the only thing she has to say for herself right now. Internally, she kicks herself for having been so sloppy and so, so stupid. She can’t blame anyone but herself for that.
“In doing so, you’ve caught the eye of my elite SOLDIER,” he says, tsking at her. “I was beginning to wonder if he had any interest in that sort of thing, having never shown an inkling of it before.”
“You mean Sephiroth? It’s not like that at all! He’s not interested in me in that way. We’re just friends, ya know. You saw that yourself when you tried to trick me with that illusion or whatever the hell it was. That was really rude of you!”
He shrugs. “I don’t believe you. I still think there’s something going on.”
“Ok. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that,” she says, sulkily.
“I can’t blame you. He was designed to lure in hopeless fawners and to be a distraction to his opponents. You’re supposed to be attracted to him, but it’s his end of it that concerns me.”
“Are you going to tell him where I’m at?” she asks, changing the subject.
“I’m not telling that idiot a thing. He needs to focus on his training. Powerful as he is, he still hasn’t reached his full potential, and it won’t benefit him to gallivant around Midgar as he’s been doing.”
She sighs. Of course. Sephiroth was her chance of bypassing all this mess that she landed in anyway. He doesn’t even know where she lives to check in on her. After not answering his calls or messages, if he leaves them, who knows what he’ll assume?
“What does Shinra plan to do with me?” She slouches forward.
Hojo puts on a scowl at that question, and Aerith has a feeling that there’s still an active disagreement between Shinra and Hojo over what should be done with her. She wouldn’t doubt if Shinra lost trust in Hojo’s decisions after Ifalna’s death. Her mother’s death wasn’t in Shinra’s plans.
“Until the lost Cetra is located, I’m required to hold off on any testing. You’ll assist in the search. Where you will be placed during that time depends on your cooperation.”
She perks up a little. “Does that mean I might have some freedom?”
He scoffs. “You’ll have to ask Tseng that, but I doubt they’ll allow you to roam free without a Turk accompanying you. You’d likely crawl back into hiding in the Slums.”
He’s not wrong about that.
“Once more thing,” he says. “Sephiroth answers to me. You’ll do well to remember that.”
Challenge accepted. She thinks to herself.
“Now. Tseng will be escorting you out of here shortly and placing you somewhere else,” he says, with irritation.
Relief sparks in her chest. Hojo’s tests would certainly expose her for who she is which would really ruin everything. She can’t let that happen. She’ll have to get out of here before then.
Tseng enters the room with another Turk she had never seen before. They move past Hojo who walks in the opposite direction to leave, and Aerith couldn’t be happier to see him go. The other Turk unlocks her door, and Tseng steps into help her to her feet. Her legs are stiff from days of lying in the same place.
They don’t speak the entire walk to where ever he is taking her. She has no idea which wing or floor of the Shinra building they are in and has no sense of direction here. The cold, air-conditioned back halls of the building seem like they stretch on for miles. It feels like she is traveling through a liminal space where the lights will cut out and horrible monsters will start scratching and groaning behind the doors. She remembers thinking this as a child when walking these halls.
She hugs herself, rubbing at the goosebumps rising along her upper arms. Tseng casts a sideward glance at her.
“You’ll be provided with something more comfortable to sleep in. Someone will collect the rest of your clothes from your apartment tomorrow,” he says.
“I, uh, appreciate that,” she says. Not that there is much to collect.
They finally stop at one of the doors, and Tseng unlocks it, pushing the creaky door open. The frigid air inside feels colder than the drafty halls. She steps inside and glances around as Tseng flips the light-switch on. The room looks more like a patient room in a hospital - minus the medical equipment - than a bedroom, but that doesn’t surprise her. The white floors are slick and shiny, and the walls are a dull gray. Her bed has basic white sheets and blankets with a simple metal nightstand next to it. On the other end is a door to a personal bathroom next to a wooden cabinet for her clothes. Somehow, the room is more depressing than her apartment in the slums. At least that place had some personality to it, what with the lively roaches and lightbulbs that had minds of their own. She might even miss it.
Tseng seems to read her thoughts. “You can make any changes that don’t require painting or replacing furniture,” he says as a suggestion. “You may be here for a while so you might as well get comfortable.”
She just nods her acknowledgment, not really wanting to speak. This environment brings back too many horrible memories for her. At first, she thought she could handle this for the greater good, but now she’s wondering if she just landed herself back in square one only with no support this time.
Tseng hands her a card connected to a lanyard. “This is for the cafeteria. You will have access to an employee one, but you are only allowed to go at certain times. In that folder on your nightstand is directions to the cafeteria and the time blocks which you are permitted.”
“So, no more taking meals in my room?” She asks.
“Correct. In some ways, you’ll be treated like a regular employee in exchange for housing and food. But you will have some limitations.”
“What about my other income? Can I still sell flowers and sing at the Honeybee lounge?”
Tseng narrows his eyes. “Unfortunately, no. Consider yourself full time with Shinra until your assignment is complete.”
“Just so you know, I never agreed to these terms!” she says. “If I’m an employee, shouldn’t I be signing paperwork and a handbook agreement?”
“Goodnight, Aeris,” Tseng says, making it clear that he won’t be entertaining her any longer.
“Wait!”
He pauses before shutting the door, a look of annoyance on his face.
“What about my phone?”
“Right.” He looks down at his wristwatch to check the time. “It is in Shinra’s possession. I don’t know any more than that, but I know you will be provided a company phone. You’ll probably receive it some time this week. If you have any more questions, you’ll need to direct them to HR tomorrow.”
He closes the door this time, leaving her in the silence of her tiny, dismal room. At the very least, she has a window next to her bed. It’s…something even though it only exposes the ugly green smog of Midgar and the sickly yellow lights of the dark city beyond. She lays her head on the windowsill and drifts off into daydreams of better days.