Chapter Text
Aerith spent her day mobile till dusk, looking for Tifa again, although a different idea of her. She’s a member of a group of vampire hunters, who've since morning have been searching Nibelheim’s forest for the remnants of those killed in a feeding. With them are the victim’s loved ones, who they walk back to town for their safety. One of them is Brian Lockhart.
“No. I’m not leaving,” he digs his boots into the dirt. When the words register to the others, they stop and stare with concern.
Barret looks side to side. His face twists in disbelief. “Are you out of your damn mind!?”
Brian jerks back. “‘Am I out of my damn mind?’ Hell no I’m not. If I am for trying to find my daughter then so be it.”
Barret softens with guilt.
“I don’t care what you think I’m supposed to do. My daughter is out there!” he huffs and throws his hand to the trees. “Tifa wouldn’t just wait here, she’d try to come find me.”
Tifa. Aerith thought.
He points at Barret. “She knows this forest better than you.” His finger droops. “She used to climb these trees every afternoon…”
A parent puts his hand on his shoulder, “Brian, she’d want you with us, alive.”
“If I can’t be here,” he gnashes his teeth, “y’all better do everything in your power to find my daughter, you hear me!?” The other townsfolk begin to guide him away, his figure getting smaller and smaller in the distance.
“Sure,” Barret says in a low tone. He turns to Aerith, Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. “We’re finishing up this grid by tonight.”
Aerith’s tired body fills with dread.
After the loved ones are escorted back, night falls, and the hunters return to the location they last searched, the only sound between them becoming the branches breaking below their steps. Amidst the ambiance, Barret somberly croaks, head to the ground.
“We’ll find their bodies, even if they aren’t whole.”
A vivid image forms in Aerith’s mind, but the others can walk on. Bloodied bodies mangled beyond recognition. Her mouth waters. Then uncontrollably, and she tightens her jaw, hunching over. The ambiance muffles.
“Aerith, you okay?” Jessie asks.
She glances up. Jessie had her hand outstretched and that look on her face that was growing common by the years. The other hunters shared it from behind. She fixes her posture immediately. “I’m fine! I just need to take a break. Gimme a sec. Okay?”
Before anyone else could speak, Aerith backs away from the group with a friendly smile, walking off trail and into the verdure, deep enough to be alone with her thoughts. She crashes against a tree heaving. Mid breath, tears well up, so she exhales.
Since puberty, it seemed like this thing was only getting worse and worse, her thirst. She’s a dhampir, but able to pass as human, and with her luck only inherited the worst of that side of her. Her head dolls over to the satchel on her waist, unclasping it to grab her pill bottle with a trembling hand. Iron supplements. More humane than drinking blood at least. Usually two was enough, but that simply isn’t the case anymore. One day tablets might not cut it, and she’d be identical to the thing her friends would kill without hesitation. Aerith shivers at the thought. She brought it to her left to open, taking out three. No, four. Five.
“Hello…?”
Aerith leaps away like a cat. Her tablets rain to the ground.
“Sorry!” Tifa steps back. “Do you need me to pick those up?”
“No- it’s fine.”
She watches Aerith carefully. The girl was frozen with a wide-eyed stare.
“Uhm.” Tifa clears her throat and straightens up. She rubs at her own wrist. “So…”
Aerith’s stare stretches wider.
Tifa hesitates, eyes wavering away. “…in the shack, you said you’d find a way to fix this.” She gestures at herself. “Any luck on that?” Her voice falters.
Aerith looks around, but her eyes had to meet Tifa eventually. She rushes. “Well… I don’t even know where to start-”
Tifa’s heart pangs, and her eyes tilt up at Aerith, quivering.
Aerith raises her palm. “-but I’ll try.”
Tifa relaxes, somewhat, and composes herself, nearly uttering. “Th-“
Aerith interrupts. “But you can’t be out here.”
“What?”
“The forest is dangerous right now. Go back to the shack. Please.”
Tifa tilts away at those words, slowly shaking her head, wincing. The weight of them pushes her away step by step. She turns around, looking at Aerith one last time, then forward, her presence fading into the sea of trees.
Aerith takes a deep breath and sinks, throwing her head into her palms. They drag down her face, and she peeks through her fingers, spotting her pill bottle illuminated by the moonlight. She quickly reaches for it, pinching out a couple of tablets, shoving them into her mouth and forcing herself to swallow. They move down her throat like slow bugs crawling under skin.
Where the bottle once was were the grubby pills scattered on the ground. Aerith fetches them into the bottle and closes it, then dumps it in her satchel and stands. She brushes dirt off herself on the way back, then goes through the curtains. Her friends stop and look. They were waiting patiently for her. Allegedly.
“Was that number 2 or number 3?” Wedge asks.
Aerith shoots a grin, waltzing up. “4.”
“There’s a 4?” Biggs tilts his head.
“Enough.” Barret orders without bite.
Smiles wipe off their faces. He gestures for the hunters to continue walking alongside him.
“We’re not gonna split up like in the morning, too risky for that.”
Aerith looks at Barret. “Well, since it’s too risky… don’t you think we could head back to the inn maybe? We’ve been searching all day after all…”
Barret looks at Aerith. “As much as I’d like to put my feet up, the parents can’t, and it’s our duty to find these people’s kids.”
Aerith nods slowly with pressed lips. Can’t say no to that.
She looks off to the side. Barret points to a patch of the forest coming up. “This should be it.”
The hunters go to that area and raise their lanterns high and low, searching every crevice of the forest floor. Aerith stands to the back on guard duty, her eyes sweeping above their peering for anything supernatural. As they go down that path, the arrangement of trees starts to look eerily familiar.
And the trees kept going on, like a dark ride at an amusement park. It could've been yesterday. She started to sweat. Her eyes dart around.
The shack was right there.
Her heart beats against her chest. She looks back and forth again and again. If they found Tifa, they’d drive a stake through her heart like she was nothing.
She dashes in front of Barret.
“What’s the matter?” Barret frowns.
“I… have an idea!”
“I-I’ve studied this in one of my books.” Aerith stands upright. “It could help us find them faster.”
She raises a finger to the stars. “Tracking the absence of sound in the biophony.”
They look at her confused.
“Basically, prey animals avoid areas where dead bodies are located. So if we can go where there’s less sound, we might be able to find something!”
Biggs looks between his friends. “I don’t know all about that nature stuff, but I’m okay with givin’ that a shot.”
Barret strokes his beard, looking up. “…yeah, that sounds… like a good idea?” He comes around to it as he speaks.
Aerith creates a cone for her ear and points it around. She wanders leftwards. “Over here!”
The others follow with unsure steps.
“I think I’m hearing less already!” Aerith exclaims. She continues going west, and her antics went on till the shack might’ve not even existed.
The hunters completed their search on the grid. They found nothing useful.
With their concentration of blood gone from Tifa’s senses, Tifa decides to come out of the shack. The first thing she wanted to do was take a bath. She had no real need to, being undead and all, but traveled down to the lake anyway.
In the water, she looks at her reflection lit by the moonlight. Her skin was paler than ever. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she already knew how pointy they had become, and felt the fangs against her tongue. Her eyes drew into her neck. Two puncture marks on the left. She drifts a pair of fingers against the tissue, looking at it with a pang, then brushing them away.
While Tifa bathed, Aerith was tucked under her covers in the inn, finally able to get the sleep her body had been aching for, but her thoughts were restless.
Go back to the shack.
Was she too harsh?
She didn’t tell Tifa to leave it.
She’s sitting there alone.
Aerith glances at Jessie next to her and peels the covers off, careful not to wake her, then lifts one leg out and into a slipper, then slowly another, and eases off the mattress, tip-toeing to the coat rack. She grabs her leather jacket and satchel and puts them over her pajamas.
Looking at Jessie again, she twists the doorknob, slowly creaking it open, then puts one foot out.
“…Aerith?”
She turns to stone.
“Where are you going… It’s the middle of the night…”
Aerith tilts a lowered head towards Jessie. “I’m just taking a walk.”
“…In your pajamas?”
“Yeah?”
“...yeah?” Jessie parrots.
“Sleep tight.” Aerith closes the door.
Half an hour later, Aerith knocks on the shack door. Then again. No response. She opens it. Tifa isn’t inside. Feeling worried, she looks off into the vast amount of trees. For all Aerith knew, Tifa could be draining the forest’s wildlife population of their lifeforce.
Tifa is behind her, not close though. When Aerith turns around, she’s still startled anyway.
“Sorry.” Tifa steps back.
Aerith clasps her hands behind her back, and a breeze runs between their silence. “Sorry for keeping you waiting all day, I should be clearer on what I’m gonna do.”
“I’ll go to the library and start researching. I’ll look for anything- a cure.”
Tifa looks up and down at Aerith’s wardrobe situation.
“…you’ve done all this for me and I still don’t know your name.”
“Aerith.”
“Aerith,” Tifa gets a feel.
She puts a hand over her heart. “I’m Tifa.”
“Hi Tifa…” Aerith slips out, barely awake.