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Tseng has gone off to Junon for the month for the Vice President, leaving Elena alone in Midgar with the Ancient.
“What if I screw something up? What if she just...dies?”
“She won’t. And if she does, you’ll be soon after.”
She wasn’t really sure if he was serious or not – Reno reassures her that yes, the director still makes jokes sometimes, he doesn’t actually have a stick that far up his ass.
Still, guarding the Ancient usually falls to Tseng, and if not him, Reno; both of them have significantly more seniority than Elena, and it’s a little terrifying to know that this is where she is on the chain of command now.
Regardless, she soon finds that it’s...rather boring. The young woman doesn’t do very much – she wakes up early every morning to tend to the gardens around her house, spends most of her days in the old church in Sector 5. Off and on she’ll go help around the slums, sometimes take the train to the upper plate to sell her flowers and herbs.
Gods, did Tseng really do this all the time?
“Hello!”
Elena jumps. She hadn’t even realized that she was spacing out.
“Come on. I’m used to having you guys hang around. At least come say hi. I don’t think I’ve met you before.”
Elena sheepishly walks out from her hiding spot. The woman is smiling at her mischievously. Uh.
“Elena, ma’am.”
“Aerith. Where’s Tseng lately?”
“Out on assignment.” Speaking of assignments, Elena isn’t usually accustomed to talking to them. Aerith doesn’t seem bothered by her silence.
“Oh. Well, tell him I said hello.”
…???
Elena decides that, since hiding out seems to be up for today, she may as well sit around in the open and wait for Aerith to finish tending to the flowerbed. Aerith murmurs quietly to her flowers sometimes like she usually does, but the two of them don’t exchange any words. Eventually, she stands up and smiles at her.
“Well! Are you going to walk me home?”
“...If that’s what you want, ma’am.”
“Lead they way, then!”
Elena walks out of the church feeling more like it’s Aerith guiding her home. The Sector 5 slums are a familiar walk even before she’d begun watching Aerith, so she knows which routes are best to take to avoid running into anything. They’re back at Aerith’s house in only a few minutes. Elena can see Elmyra through the window. Her face is hard as a stone wall when she notices Elena standing there. Aerith doesn’t seem to care, though. She turns and waves.
“Well! See ya.”
Elena tentatively raises a hand in return.
She...isn’t exactly supposed to leave any time soon, but okay?
The next time Aerith is in the church, Elena notices the camera setup.
Mostly because it’s an old flashbulb camera. Also, because it has Tseng’s name written on it.
(Why?)
“Does he sit here and photograph you all day?”
She tries so hard not to blush when she asks that. Really, she does. Aerith shrugs, doesn’t even notice.
“Surveillance. Tseng mentioned once that Shinra wanted cameras put up in here.”
“Hm.”
“I made a compromise with him. He can take as many pictures as they need while he’s around, but. Y’know.”
Elena does know – she’s been photographing Aerith the whole time. Not right in her face, but there’s a setup in the church. Aerith probably knows that, too. What’s up with this whole separate thing?”
“Huh.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you messed around with it, though. Go ahead. Take my picture.”
Elena snaps her head up to look at her so quickly it almost hurts her neck.
“What?!”
“Go ahead! Take my picture. Make sure it’s a good one; it’s Tseng’s camera.”
Elena blushes. What? And again; why?
“I...okay?”
Aerith does a little pose, and Elena snaps a picture. The camera whirrs. She has no idea what the photograph even looks like.
“I guess Tseng’s gonna add that to his collection,” Elena mumbles out loud before she realizes what she’s saying. She hears Aerith make a noise, and Elena looks up in alarm. “Um! I mean, I don’t think that’s what he uses this for, I-”
Aerith is laughing.
“Can you imagine? He probably does have a folder or something stuffed away. What if I asked him about it?”
“Ma’am, I don’t think you should-!”
“Call me Aerith.”
“Aerith! Don’t!”
Aerith giggles.
“I won’t.”
Elena pouts.
“...Thanks, Aerith.”
Her name feels nice to say out loud.
Tseng comes back from Junon a few days later looking uncharacteristically tired. Still, they fall into a routine of swapping in and out, both alternating on guard.
Elena is a little bit glad to let him take over hanging out around Aerith for a few days – the girl really is boring. Elena goes back to the Shinra building, filing and writing and all the boring administrative stuff that goes down alongside keeping actual physical watch on the Ancient.
...Okay, Aerith was as boring as watching paint dry. But Elena kind of misses her.
“You know, ideally I shouldn’t even know you’re here. You’re really bad at this.”
Elena frowns.
“You were the one who said you wanted me to stop hiding.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
Aerith turns around from her garden and gestures for Elena to come closer. The Turk had been sitting on one of the church pews, watching her tend to her flowers. Elena stands up and walks over to Aerith’s side.
“Do you want to help me out with the weeding?”
“...I don’t think that’s why I’m here.”
“Oh, come on. Just because Tseng’s back doesn’t mean you have to be a stick in the mud now, too.”
Elena sighs and takes off her jacket. It isn’t as warm inside the church as it is in the slums outside, as stuffy as it is under the plate, but crawling around on the dirt will probably warm her up quick. Aerith watches her motions, waiting. Elena crouches down on her knees at the edge of the flower bed.
“So I just pull them?”
“Yep!”
Well...there aren’t very many to begin with, Elena notices, but she dutifully looks around and plucks at any stray weeds growing in between the flowers. Guess not even magical Cetra-grown flowers are immune to the annoying little plants.
“Don’t weeds have a right to grow, too?” Elena huffs as she crawls around in the dirt.
“They do,” Aerith chirps, “just not around my flowers.”
Fair enough. Elena plucks and plucks until she can’t find any, then walks back to the edge of the flowerbed and sits. Her suit is covered in dirt, and she’ll probably have to change once she swaps out for the day and heads back to HQ. Elena tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and sighs. Gardening is, somehow, more exhausting than Aerith makes it seem. You’d think it wouldn’t be enough to have Elena overheated, but. Here we are.
“What do they sound like to you?” Aerith asks her suddenly. “What do they say? The flowers.”
Elena looks at her. “Um...say?”
“Well. They don’t actually say anything.”
“What do I think of them?”
“If that’s a better way of thinking about it, sure.”
Elena looks at Aerith, unbothered by crawling around in the dirt, a smudge of it on her nose. Her hair is tied back in a braid, and baby hairs stick to her forehead with sweat.
“...They’re beautiful,” Elena says, looking away from Aerith and at the flowerbed instead.
“The flowers said that?” Aerith says. Elena hears the teasing in her voice.
“They’re pretty stuck-up flowers.”
Aerith laughs. Elena think that’s also a beautiful sound.
There are several folders waiting by Elena’s seat at the desk when she arrives at Shinra. She groans.
“Welcome to the club,” Reno says to her from across the desk, not looking up from his own stack. “Now accepting members.”
She slumps down in her chair. She wonders if her sister ever had to do this much paperwork, or if Tseng is just a particular brand of bastard director. It all seems to be just routine stuff anyway, so she feels her eyes glaze over a little as she fills in blanks and initials forms.
She’s about to flip another paper over when something falls out of the folder. A small, glossy square of paper slips off her desk. Elena looks over at Reno; he seems to be on the verge of falling asleep. She scoots back her chair and bends down to pick it up.
It’s a small square photograph; Aerith’s smiling face looks up at her, her hand making a little peace sign at the camera. Elena turns red, and bangs her head on the underside of the desk. She hears Reno snort.
“Ehehghfmfu?”
“Stop sleeping,” Elena quips back at him, getting back up to her chair. Reno watches her stuff the photo back under the pile of papers.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” Elena says, too fast, and Reno gives her a look. She ignores him, filling out the rest of the paper quickly.
When she takes the folder back to Tseng’s desk, she quickly slips the photograph under her sleeve so Reno doesn’t notice. She hurries out of the room.
There isn’t anything written on the back of the photograph but the time and date the picture was taken. Standard for all of their logs of the Ancient; Tseng must have placed its timing from the actual church camera’s photo logs. She felt nervous at the thought; was that not allowed somehow? Taking the picture? It was Aerith’s idea. Did it get mixed in there by mistake? Should she have put it back on his desk or something?
Elena has the photograph now, though, and she definitely doesn’t want to walk all the way back just to have Reno grill her about it. She holds onto it.
Tseng doesn’t ask about it later.
“We should go somewhere,” Aerith says before Elena even has a chance to open her mouth. “There’s a park I used to play in a lot when I was younger. I still hang out there sometimes. Wanna come?”
I don’t really have a choice, do I? Elena thinks. Aerith pulls her along.
It’s grown a bit colder in the past few weeks, so the park is empty of any children today. Midgar doesn’t exactly experience much in the way of extreme weather, so it’s unlikely to snow unless it gets very cold, but there’s less people lingering outside. Aerith is wearing a coat at Elena’s insistence.
“Tseng will murder me if I let you catch a cold,” she’d said. Aerith smiled.
“I’ll be fine if I’m with you.”
Aerith sits on one of the empty swings and kicks her feet, giving herself some momentum to begin moving. Elena leans against the side of the giant slide, watching her. They sit in silence for a while, the only noise the creak of the metal chain swing.
“Hey!”
It’s Elena’s only warning before Aerith launches herself off the swings with a whoop, falling in the dirt.
“Aerith!” Elena yells, running to her side. Aerith hobbles to her feet; her legs are a little scratched up and dusty, and she leans on Elena a bit when she stands up.
“That...didn’t work as well as I’d thought.”
“No duh!!”
“I think I’d have to be a little lighter to land that well.”
“I’d think so!!”
“Ow.”
“Come on,” Elena sighs. “I’m taking you home.”
Aerith laughs, but hobbles alongside her.
I feel like I’m talking to a child sometimes…
She definitely feels like she’s caring for a child as they walk back to the church. Aerith says nothing as Elena casts a cure on her legs, patching her up, and Elena scowls at her.
“No doing stuff like that again, young lady.”
Aerith smiles at her. “You really do sound a lot like Tseng sometimes when you get fussy over me.”
Elena leans back and looks at her. “Hm?”
“He’s been keeping tabs on me since I was a child.”
“Oh.” Elena didn’t know Tseng had known Aerith that long. Or...how old Tseng was all, really. Was he even old enough to watch Aerith when she was small? “He’s been watching you that long?”
“Not a long long time. Since I was twelve, maybe. But...he’s the closest thing I have to an older friend. He keeps telling me not to do stupid stuff, too.”
“Like throwing yourself off a swingset in the hopes of…?”
“I was testing if you’d catch me.”
Elena snorts, looks away.
“Of course I’d catch you.”
“Because you have to, right?”
Elena looks at her out of the corner of her eye; Aerith is staring at her suddenly with a strange look on her face.
“I...guess so?”
Aerith sighs and sits back on the pew. She brings her knees up to her chin and crosses her arms around her legs.
“You know I won’t go with you guys.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you.”
“Not today though, right? But sometime. That’s the endgame of it all.”
Elena cautiously takes a seat next to Aerith. She doesn’t turn away, but she doesn’t meet Elena’s eyes, either. She has a distant look in her eyes, something lonely and cold that stands in stark contrast to the vibrant, smiling girl in Elena’s photograph.
“Aerith?”
“I really don’t care anymore that you guys stand around and watch me in my personal space. But I can have my thoughts to myself.”
Well.
Elena scoots away from her and stands up. She walks over to her old spot behind the church pillar, out of Aerith’s line of sight.
The Ancient eventually leaves the church, but she never acknowledges Elena’s presence for the rest of the day.
“Sorry about the other day,” Aerith says a bit later. Elena looks out from her hiding spot. (Are they even hiding spots anymore, if Aerith knows where they all watch her from?) Aerith is standing in the center of her bed of flowers, the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the hole in the roof. Elena walks hesitantly over to the edge of the dirt.
“Ma’am?”
“Elena.”
Oh. First names again.
Aerith continues. “I was...in a bad mood. Nothing was going right. I probably shouldn’t have pushed you off like that. Sorry.”
“I...there’s no reason for you to apologize to me,” Elena says. “Nothing you said was...well. I mean, nothing you said wasn’t exactly wrong.”
“No,” Aerith says, “it wasn’t. But I think it upset you anyway.”
“It’s my job, Aerith.”
“I know.”
“I have to do my job.”
“I know.”
“Is it something I said about the director? I know he has that weird camera and all. I even got back the picture I took of you. Is he like...weird, or something?”
Aerith laughs. “No, he’s not weird. I mean...I guess he’s weird, but not that kind of weird. I don’t know why he keeps the camera. I think he gives the pictures to my mom.”
“Huh?”
“About half my childhood album is from him. It’s not like he’s my dad or anything – he isn’t that much older than me – but I think he just cares, in his own way. When I’m gone. What she’ll have to remember me by.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Aerith.”
“Not right now. You gotta do your job sometime.”
“Sometime, right. But not right now.”
Aerith looks around at the rafters of the church. There’s the distant rustling of mice, the sound of old wood settling into place. A few of the cameras are set up on them, though Aerith wouldn’t be able to see them from here. They’re set up to take shots every seven minutes when there’s movement in the church.
“You said that you got the photo back of me?” Aerith says, still looking up.
Elena blushes.
“I...yeah, the one I took of you. Do you want the actual security ones? I mean, I don’t know if I can actually get a hold of them, I don’t know if that’s allowed, but maybe if you want I can just go get one and -”
“Was it a nice picture?”
“I...I guess?” Elena stammers. “I mean. Yeah! It’s a cute picture.”
Aerith looks around at herself and smiles. “I can’t believe you came in here to show it to the flowers for their opinion.”
“I trust the flowers. They’re nice flowers.”
“Oh?” Aerith’s voice is a sing-song. “So the flowers think they’re beautiful, but you think they’re just nice?”
“There’s other beautiful things, too,” Elena swallows.
“Besides flowers?” Aerith walks to the edge of the flowerbed where Elena’s standing.
“Uh-huh. Flowers. Wonderful flowers. Really...cute flowers.”
“Cute flowers.”
Does Aerith really have to stand so close? Can Elena just go back to watching her quietly behind the pillar? Is it too late for that? Can she see how bright her face is? She really needs to work on that. That probably isn’t good, that she blushes. The flowers really are pretty. Aerith is prettier.
“You talk out loud.”
“Huh??”
Aerith giggles. “I don’t know if you notice it. When you’re standing around me, you tend to think out loud to yourself.
Elena screeches and smacks her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, I – Aerith, no, I – ma’am – Aerith ma’am -”
“I guess I can forgive it,” Aerith says. She grins. “It might cost you, though.”
Elena mumbles out something that vaguely sounds like “whattareyoudooinggg” as Aerith slings her arms over her shoulders.
“Just one kiss.”
Elena knows she’s blushing now.
“Is that acceptable?”
“I...sure!” Elena squeaks, and Aerith kisses her.
She isn’t exactly sure what she expected from kissing Aerith, but whatever it is she feels, she feels like the flowers haven’t warned her enough about just how wonderful it is.
“Elena. A word, please.”
Tseng catches her on the way out the door.
“Director?”
“It won’t take long.”
Elena’s heart is hammering, and she knows immediately what this is about.
“I noticed you made a mistake on your last report,” he says, pulling out the same folder that Elena had left on his desk a little while ago. The same one she found the photograph in. “You neglected to sign off on Generic Report Square B. Additionally, you didn’t replace Filler Section with Another Section F.”
“I...sorry, sir!”
“Very well. How is Aerith doing? I hear she’s selling her flowers, now.”
“She’s...doing good. Isn’t that in the report, though?”
“I’d much rather hear it from you.”
He tilts his head slightly; his face is unreadable, but for a moment she almost thinks he looks amused by something.
“She’s...she’s good! Yeah. Doing okay. Probably not going to come back to Shinra anytime soon. Uh. Good.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Tseng says. He puts the folder aside. “I’ll continue to leave it to you, Elena.”
“Elena? What are you doing up there?”
Aerith sits down at the floor of the church, watching Elena crawl around on a makeshift walkway up in the rafters.
“Temporarily – huff! - disabling these stupid cameras!”
“I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that.”
“Stupid – urgh! - Tseng!”
“Do you need any help?”
“No!”