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Things were advancing. Aerith had noticed long ago. She was young, but she wasn’t stupid. Everything was falling into place in the worst way possible.
She couldn’t remember the last time that she had really seen Sephiroth. The way they had been kept apart seemed intentional—preparational—in a way that she didn’t like. Even a child of her age had the eyes to see—and the wisdom to know—how little there was that she could do to stop it. Their path was predetermined. She tried not to think about it very much. All her efforts went to faith, to love. In Hojo’s claws, there were few other paths one could take to survive.
The room she was in was bisected by a heavy, unforgiving wall. The only point of entry between it and the room next door—a perfect mirror of her own—was a large, impenetrable metal door, fully impassable save for a gap about an inch high between the bottom of the door and the steel floor beneath her.
She had been in this room before. Sephiroth had been in the other. This time, she had come prepared.
Carefully, silently—so as not to disturb her watchers, the men hidden behind their cameras and their two-way mirrors—Aerith slipped two folded scraps of paper out of her clothes. One was blank, the other marbled with life and color. She unfolded the blank one, sneaking a dull, black crayon out of her right sock, and got to work.
Digging the crayon into the paper, she asked one simple, tiny question, the same question she asked herself at every end of these long absences between them. Gingerly, quietly, she slipped that soft, innocent question through the yawning gap between them, laying it to rest beside Sephiroth’s feet. She passed him the crayon as he picked up the paper, listening closely for signs that he was reading.
Did they hurt you again?
Aerith paused for the answer, ears ready and waiting for the sound of Sephiroth writing something back to her—but nothing came. On the other end of the door, she heard him pick up the paper. It crinkled softly in his hands, but he didn’t smooth it out. Silence was precious to them now.
Without answering—hardly breathing—Sephiroth returned the crayon and the question to her, both unchanged as they passed through the gap.
A pressure settled over her chest. She understood Sephiroth enough to know what he meant; he was deflecting the question back at her, always more concerned for her than he ever was for himself. Having accepted his fate—resigning himself to atrocities that Aerith couldn’t begin to imagine—he couldn’t handle questions about it, and in his mind, there were much more important things to worry about.
Crayon in hand, she tried again.
I’m okay.
Are you safe?
Sephiroth accepted what she gave him—at last! Aerith held her breath, waiting for his response. He scribbled something in grand, looping letters on the back of her note; she watched as he did it through flickering shadows beyond the gap. It didn’t take long for him to pass it back to her.
CAN’T
She felt something soft inside her drop into the pit of her stomach at the sight of the word. It wasn’t an answer to what she had asked, but it said all she needed to know and more. Every possible meaning ran through her mind; that he couldn’t talk, that he couldn’t think, that he couldn’t bear the pain—that he wasn’t safe.
Reflecting back to her was all of the frozen pain in his spirit that came to him only when there was some great, insurmountable threat, an adversary—a demon—that could be escaped only by stilling completely, a battle that could only be won through surrender and prayer that the danger would pass. As her eyes traced those four clumsy letters, she felt grief; grief for the planet, grief for their predicament, and grief for him.
Aerith pressed her knees to her chest, curling in on herself. Her blood raced with pain, all the pain she felt at knowing that he had been promised to something that could not love him the way that she did—something destined to pervert him, to destroy him. She clutched steadfast to the dream that the two of them shared, to their dream, a dream of escape, of freedom from what Hojo’s men had called the natural order. No matter what, she told herself, she knew she mustn’t let go of that dream.
Refusing to surrender, she unfolded her second paper, careful not to disturb their observers. Her eyes played over the mottled surface of colors that shone on the page—the drawing that she had worked so very hard on. Soft-spoken leaves and gentle, merciful flower petals curled in on themselves, joined at the base into a fresh bouquet. She had spent what felt like hours on it, poring over every detail, working entirely from memory, all to show Sephiroth the one thing she could never resist telling him about. The flowers, both wise as serpents and harmless as doves, stood tall with the strength of Aerith’s mother. She slipped them under the door.
Behind all of her bravery, despair curdled inside her, a well-kept secret to all but herself—but, deep in the heart of her truest and most innocent prayers, she knew that someday they would be reunited, that they would rewrite the wrongs that had been done to their bodies. Across the dirty, mechanical airwaves that winnowed into the spaces between their bodies, beyond the cold of that awful metal door, something watched them—but not forever. She knew they would again be free.
A new thread unspooled inside of her, a fresh, raw flower of conviction unfurling beside the corners of her gentle heart. They would be free—and she knew what would set them free, if only for this moment, if only for the span of one breath.
Carefully, abandoning her papers, flattening her palm as close as she could to the cold metal floors, Aerith slid her hand under the door again. She reached through to the other side into that cold, forbidden hole that Hojo’s men held Sephiroth in with nothing in her hand, offering only the tips of her fingers. They brushed against his leg.
Sephiroth flinched against her touch, but he corrected himself. Angling his body to hide from the watchers, he slid one flat-handed finger between two of hers. Sensing the desperation behind his cold hand, Aerith found a way to inch the tips of her fingers just a little bit closer to him. He clung to her—they clung to each other, and Aerith knew that he could feel her body’s warmth from the other side of the door. Their bodies locked into each other energetically, entwining as though they were two parts of the same brutalized mind, and she heard something soft escape his chest, a twisted sigh of relief. The sound caught in the top of his throat. He slid his hand closer.
To their captors, their hearts were worthless, amounting to nothing more than matters of scientific curiosity, but Aerith knew the truth. She and Sephiroth were two children whose souls reached out for each other in the darkest recesses of humanity—their hearts were all they had, blessings from a power far beyond the laboratory’s understanding. No matter if their bodies were forced to participate in Hojo’s games, their hearts knew better. In their hearts, they knew the truth.
This peace would not last—deep down inside, they both knew that. Knowing they would inevitably be ripped apart, Aerith still offered her hand, longing to be close to him, longing to offer him that closeness to reach into from the dark and horrific world in which he lived—because she believed in love, believed that he deserved that love, and because she knew that the greatest gift she had to offer was this strength, this conviction, that everything would definitely— definitely— be alright.
Aerith thought back to their common room, to their wall of drawings, the world that they lived in together, and she smiled. Cold fingers against warm, Aerith knew the truth. When this moment ended, they would just make another. She would stay strong for him, and they would escape.
Together.
In her heart of hearts, she could see it.
They would win—no matter the cost.