[Fic] Peace of the Garden - FFVII, Zack/Aerith, 1/5
I think I've now written more het for FFVII than every other series combined. Not even all for the same pairing! *facepalms* And I've just realized that I'm not going to be able to crosspost this to ffvii_yaoi because DUH, it's not yaoi. *headdesk*

It was supposed to be a one-shot, of course. Unlike 'Permission to Touch', I finally gave up and broke it into actual pieces because it wasn't just one continuous timeline. Unfortunately since I didn't write it with the intention of it being in parts, the lengths are a bit uneven. >.<

Title: Peace of the Garden
Series: FFVII
Pairing: Zack/Aerith
Rating: eventual NC-17.
Warnings: Het, mentions of war and violence.
Word Count: 3409
Total Word Count: 3409

Zack gets more than he expected out of a week of leave.



Only one in four green troops survived a month on the front lines in Wutai. Perhaps half of those remaining would make it through a year. But once you'd survived a year, or so the saying went, you were golden - until you got tired.

Physical exhaustion was common in the trenches, but this was a different kind of 'tired'. This was a weariness of the soul, when you'd been fighting for months on end without a break and no chance at leave any time soon. Shinra was short on troopers these days; they'd already lost too many in the war and there was no end in sight. The initial rush of patriotism or bravado that had prompted people to sign on at the beginning had long since faded, and conscripted troops tended to be little more than cannon fodder. There just weren't enough of them for them to be granted any kind of extended leave, no matter how weary they got.

Tired troops made sloppy mistakes, and tired officers made stupid decisions. There was a direct correlation between the attrition rate of a given squadron and the length of time since their last leave. Once that slippery slide got started, all you could do was hang on and pray you'd be one of the few who made it through somehow.

Zack had always been good at beating the odds, though his luck had come at a high price this time. Two weeks ago his CO had stepped on a materia landmine, and Zack had led the remainder of his beleaguered squadron to safety despite heavy enemy fire. He'd earned himself a medal, a field promotion to 2nd Class, and the personal attention of General Sephiroth.

And, thanks be to all the gods, a whole month back at HQ. Granted the majority of it would be taken up with training to master his 2nd Class enhancements, but he had a little more than a week before he was scheduled in the lab and he intended to enjoy every last minute of his leave. He wouldn't get another chance any time soon.

So he'd hopped the first available airship back to Midgar, crashed in his tiny little room in the 3rd Class barracks, and slept through most of his first day back. The rest of it had been occupied in eating something that had actually been cooked properly and a long, long soak in the nearest bathtub.

Now he was clean, fed, and happily unoccupied. The only thing that would have made his day more perfect would have been a lack of uniform; he'd discovered, much to his dismay, that he'd completely outgrown all his non-Shinra issue clothing while he'd been away. It was nice to know that he'd finally put on a bit of height and muscle, but at the same time he would have liked to shed the uniform he'd been living in for a year now.

Oh, well. He'd just have to buy some more. He had the better part of a year's worth of hazardous duty pay burning a hole in his bank account, he could certainly afford it. And it would give him something to do while he wandered.

The one thing he did regret was his decision to come down under the plate. The weather up top had been miserable, icy rain making the streets slick and dangerous, so he'd headed down into sector 6. What he hadn't accounted for was the reaction of people down here to his uniform. Shinra wasn't terribly popular with the people who lived cut off from the sun and weather, slowly starving to death and grubbing about to try to make a living in the dim twilight world. Even in sector 6, where so many of the troops stationed in the city came to spend their money and free time, civilians still edged away or even crossed the street to avoid a man in SOLDIER uniform.

Tomorrow would be different, once he had some jeans to wear. The glow in his eyes would still give him away to anyone who knew what to look for, but not many people paid that sort of close attention to a stranger on the street. For now he'd just stick to the main streets and shop idly for clothes.

At least, that was the plan, until he caught a whiff of an elusively familiar scent. He paused right where he was, standing in the middle of the sidewalk with the flow of foot traffic swirling by on either side of the obstruction he made. Flowers, he finally identified. Not the heavily perfumed tropical plants he'd seen in the southern regions of Wutai, but something more subtle than that.

Lilies, he thought, and maybe roses too. His mother had kept a flourishing garden in their backyard, and he'd learned quickly as a kid not to ever tramp through the plants there. Lilies and roses had been two of her favourites, and the scent made him just a little homesick. The weird part was smelling them here in Midgar, a city where nothing green grew for miles around, let alone under the plate where there was no sunlight.

It could have been a perfume, of course. There was enough cheap perfume in the air of sector 6 to drown a chocobo, especially for the enhanced senses of a SOLDIER. But those same enhanced senses told him that this smell didn't carry any of the chemical tang he associated with even good quality perfumes; it was the real thing, or else the best damned approximation he'd ever encountered.

Turning slowly, he sought the source of the scent, his eyes wide. He almost missed it, but a flash of white caught his eyes and he turned back in time to see a girl about his own age hand a lily to a giggling young couple. She smiled at them, and damned if his heart didn't skip a beat. He'd always thought that was romantic tripe, but there was something about her smile that made his whole world pause for just a moment.

He tried to catch her eyes, but she turned away before he could manage. He walked after her, trying to lengthen his stride so he could catch up to her without running and making a scene.

Despite the fact that Zack didn't have to fight the tide of sidewalk traffic thanks to the way people avoided him, he couldn't seem to reach her. She didn't look like she was actively dodging, and people certainly weren't going out of their way to let her through, but somehow she just naturally slipped right into the flow of people and made it work to her advantage. Unfortunately the lily she'd given away had been the last in the basket she carried over one arm, so he couldn't even hope for her to stop to sell another one.

She obviously knew her way around the area, because her steps never hesitated as she left the bright streets of the entertainment district and headed into the maze-like passages of sector 5. Zack followed, doing his best not to lose sight of her in the twisting corridors.

Before he could make up his mind whether or not to call out and try to get her attention, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him behind her. "Uh, hey," he started, not quite sure how to initiate a conversation under these circumstances.

To his dismay her eyes flicked to his uniform and went wide with surprise and something painfully close to fear. The expression lasted only a moment before it was replaced with determination and indignation. "I don't think so," she said firmly. And then she took off running.

Startled, Zack cursed and chased after her, not even stopping to question why he was pursuing someone who so obviously didn't like SOLDIERs. He'd had a lot of people look at him with fear since making 3rd Class, and it had bothered him in a sort of general way, but this was the first time he'd actually been upset because someone was afraid of him. The vague thought in the back of his head was that he wanted her to smile at him like she had at that young couple, not look at him with fear and anger.

"Wait!" he called, struggling to follow her path and she ducked and wove among the debris. They seemed to be in a back alley system, with junk left over from construction of the plates scattered everywhere and turning it into a strange metal jungle. Following her in this mess was every bit as difficult as tracking a Wutai ninja through the forest.

If she heard him she showed no sign of it, vanishing around a sharp corner. Zack took the turn a moment later, and pulled up short. There were four different paths branching off from here, and there was no sign of her on any of them. He studied each one carefully, looking for some clue, and finally headed down the one with the nearest bend in the path. The others ran straight for a good hundred yards, and he couldn't imagine how she could have gotten out of sight that quickly if she'd taken one of them.

He ran, knowing she'd probably gotten a significant lead on him while he hesitated. Under ordinary circumstances he'd have been astonished that a normal girl could outrun a SOLDIER, but he'd been forced to go slowly for fear of rounding a turn and finding himself with a face full of rusted iron spikes, or something.

Once again he was forced to skid to a halt as he came around a second bend. There was nothing but a solid wall of junk, with no openings large enough to accommodate anything bigger than a cat. "Odin take it," he swore, frustrated. How had she vanished like that?

He turned to go back, and hesitated as his instincts told him he wasn't alone. It was the same instinct that had gotten him through the mine field in Wutai, so he wasn't about to ignore it. Scanning the area, he searched for a possible hiding place. "Look, I just want to..."

Something hit him in the chest and exploded in a cloud of white dust. Reflexes honed by far too many surprise attacks had him lashing back without even thinking about it. He'd left his sword in his room, but he wasn't stupid enough to go down to the lower city without his bracer.

Lightning licked out in the direction the attack had come from, the Bolt 3 spell racing along the metal walls of the cul-de-sac. Too late Zack remembered that he was chasing a civilian, not an enemy fighter - and a third level elemental spell might very well kill her.

With a hoarse shout and a wrenching effort he pulled the energy of the spell off course, turning it back on himself. The blast was magnified by the extra energy he'd had to put into it to divert it, and it left him reeling. Panting, he dropped to one knee, bracing himself with one hand on the ground and glaring upwards. "Ramuh's beard, lady, don't you know any better than to attack someone who just came off the front lines?"

She was above him, balanced on a piece of corrugated sheet metal braced by two leaning girders. His words drew a bit of repentance from her expression, but mostly she still just looked indignant. "You brought it on yourself," she told him firmly. "Chasing me like that. You can just march right back to Shinra and tell them that if I wouldn't go with the Turks, I'm certainly not going to let a SOLDIER haul me off."

"Say what?" Zack blinked, feeling like he'd missed an important part of the conversation somehow. Why would the Turks be interested in a flower girl? She was a bit young for them to be recruiting her for their own ranks, and anyway they wouldn't have a use for someone there against her will. But surely she couldn't be a SOLDIER candidate? Except for the Turks, Shinra was a decidedly misogynistic environment. If there were any female SOLDIERs, Zack had never met them.

"I'm not going with you," she repeated, but her determined expression was slipping into a puzzled frown. "You don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Not a clue," he agreed, looking up at her. "I just got back from Wutai yesterday. I'm on leave, despite the uniform."

"Then why were you chasing me like that?" she demanded.

"I just..." It sounded stupid in his head, to say that he'd been hounding her because he wanted to see her smile again. He flushed, grateful his skin was dark enough not to show a blush easily. "I saw you with the flower. I haven't seen anything green within a twenty mile radius of Midgar. Where did you get it?"

Now even the frown was softening, and she sighed quietly. "I grow them," she told him. Which still didn't tell him how she'd gotten them to grow, unless she'd come in from Kalm just to sell them.

Cool blue energy washed over him, and the worst of the pain from the Bolt spell faded. "I'm sorry I attacked you," she told him when he blinked up at her in puzzlement. "But you shouldn't just chase strange girls around, you know," she added with an impish expression. "We have to know how to take care of ourselves, living down here. If you want a flower, you'll have to come back another day. I'm all out."

She turned to go, and Zack scrambled to his feet. "Hey, wait! At least tell me your name!"

Looking back over her shoulder, she smiled at him. It was every bit as pretty from this angle as it had been when he'd seen it on the street. "Aerith." And with that she was gone, dropping down into another passageway out of sight.

"Aerith, huh?" Looking in the direction she'd gone, Zack shook his head. She was without a doubt the oddest girl he'd ever met.

And now he had to make his way back to HQ to get changed, and would doubtless be hounded by anyone who saw him covered in white dust. By nightfall every last private and paper-pusher in Shinra was going to know that a flower girl had successfully ambushed a 3rd Class SOLDIER, and he was going to be the laughingstock of the base for a while.

Brushing the worst of it off him, Zack laughed to himself. He could take a little ribbing; he certainly dished it out often enough that it was only just that he bear the brunt of it for a while. It was worth it, he decided. Not only was she beautiful, she had enough spunk for three people. How could he not be fascinated?

He already knew he wanted to see her again. If he had to spend his whole week lurking in sector 6, hoping to run across her again, he would. With luck he'd be able to be a little more direct than that, though. Normally he wasn't the sort of guy to go skirt chasing any time he had a chance, but he was willing to make an exception.

More than a few people gave him odd looks on the train, and there were muffled snickers from behind him. Zack couldn't blame people for laughing; when he caught glimpses of himself in the reflection of the windows, he looked a fright. Hades, he was surprised the littlest kids weren't fleeing him in terror or something.

It was still raining above the plate, and Zack made no particular effort to avoid getting wet this time. He was hoping the water would wash some of it off him before he got back to the base; the less of it he was wearing, the less teasing he would have to take.

Running a hand through his hair, he grimaced at the feel of it. The white crap didn't seem to be washing off, rather it was clumping together and turning into a thick sort of paste. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to wash out.

The gate guards gave him astonished looks, but were constrained by their duties not to say anything. Everyone else inside was another matter entirely. There were snickers from the troopers, desperately stifled lest Zack decide to take offence and heap punishment duties on them. The commissioned officers and other SOLDIERs weren't so polite, laughing outright at the sight of him.

"Holy fucking Bahamut, what happened to you?" a 2nd Class Zack knew vaguely exclaimed as he walked into the locker room. "You look like someone tried to turn you into a snowman or something!"

"Would you believe it was divine retribution from a pissed off angel?" Zack replied, laughing and shaking his head. "I was following a pretty girl, trying to catch up to her, and apparently she thought I was stalking her or something so she ambushed me." He'd already decided not to give too many details of the way Aerith had implied that someone in Shinra was after her, not until he had a better idea of what was going on.

"I'd say her answer is 'no'," the other SOLDIER chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. He made a face as he realized he'd just put his hand in a clump of the stuff. "Hey, do you realize this stuff is hardening?" he asked curiously.

"It's what?" Surprised, Zack prodded at some of it that was clinging to his arm, and swore. "Hellfires, it's plaster!" he yelped in dismay. "I thought it was just flour or something!"

Quick-drying plaster, at that. The thinner layers of it had already started to harden, and he didn't think he was ever going to be able to wear this uniform again. Tugging at his hair, he confirmed that it was starting to dry there, too. If he didn't get it out fast, he was going to have to cut it out.

Swearing creatively, he stripped out of his uniform as fast as humanly possible, listening to the others in the room laughing their asses off. Leaving his clothes in a puddle of fabric and plaster on the floor, he kicked open his locker, grabbed his shower kit and bolted for the showers.

"Maybe she admired your pretty face so much she was trying to make a statue of you?" someone called after him, and there was more laughter.

"Hey, who wouldn't want to be able to admire my stunning features every day?" he shouted back, his words somewhat muffled by the spray of water he was standing under. "I'll get you a copy if you want!"

The funny thing was that he wasn't even angry with her. Admiring would be a more accurate word for the way he felt right now. She'd not only managed to ambush him, she'd done it in a way that wouldn't hurt him, but that slowed him down and left him embarrassed to teach him a lesson. If it hadn't been raining he wouldn't have had much trouble, but then maybe if it hadn't been raining she'd have used something else. He had the feeling she was the resourceful type.

And how many people would ever dare to do something like this to a SOLDIER? She had a lot of nerve, that was for sure.

Most SOLDIERs never settled down; they gave various reasons for it, usually citing the fact that they moved around too much or that their jobs were too dangerous, but the truth was that most normal people were afraid of them. Even the ones who worked with them on a regular basis and seemed outwardly comfortable with them tended to have a subtle hint of fear lurking in the backs of their eyes. They were different, alien, and people feared that which was different. Who could face having their wife or girlfriend look at them like that?

Tugging a hard lump of plaster free, Zack winced as some of his hair came out with it. Despite the pain he was still grinning. Somehow, he didn't think fear was going to be a problem with this girl. Staying on his toes and keeping himself in one piece was more likely to be a priority, but that would just make it interesting.