#I still wish we’d gotten a name explanation for Baby 5

[rune-writes]

One Date

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

@zerith-week » Day 1: Church

Word Count: 3178

Rating: G

Summary: Zack visits the Sector 5 slums church with a mind to ask Aerith out on that date he promised, but when rambunctious kids are involved, nothing goes as he planned.

Chapter 1 of Of Wishes and Promises: Zerith Week 2021

Read on AO3.

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When Zack visited the church that day, he’d already had a mind where to take Aerith out. A date filled with excitement, he called it. He’d bring her to the Upper Plate as he’d promised. It’d be a surprise—one he planned not to tell until they boarded the train heading for Upper Midgar. He’d show her the cute cafes Kunsel told him about, then the flower shops that might interest her to invest more in her own business. They could visit boutiques, and he’d buy her all the dresses she wanted; threw in a couple of shoes and maybe a hat too. His SOLDIER salary could afford it. He’d checked. Then, they could go to the food plaza with those sweet, fluffy crepes with an overabundant of cream. They could even visit the theater at Sector 8, if that was more of her thing. But one thing he knew was that at the end of their date, he’d bring her to Midgar Tower—the highest commercial tower in all the metropolitan city, bar the Shinra building. With no other skyscrapers to block their view, he’d show her the sky, stretching as far as the eye could see.

She’d love it—he knew. So bright, so blue, so deep. It was the most beautiful place to witness it in the entire Midgar. So when Zack reached the Sector 5 slums church and pushed open the heavy double doors, his entire being brimming with enthusiasm—

A sharp jab to the center of his stomach; Zack doubled over, clutching his abdomen as tears sprang to his eyes. Gleeful squeals filled his ears. Kids, around six to eight years old, ran back down the aisle to the flower bed at the church’s other end, where Aerith sat next to a girl making crowns from her lilies.

“Oates!” she called, stern, but even from the distance, Zack could see her suppressed smile. “You don’t jab people on the stomach.”

The smaller of the two kids running from him skidded to a halt, mumbling “aww, shucks�� or something of the like, though he didn’t look apologetic at all.

“Now go back and apologize to Zack.”

Zack remembered the kid now. He was the one who'd stolen Zack’s wallet the first time Zack was here. Oates, was it? He'd never gotten the kid’s name.

Oates reached his side a moment later and, eyes downcast, mumbled a half-hearted apology. Before Zack could say anything, however, the kid had rushed back to where his friends waited, leaving Zack staring after him. His mouth quirked up into a little amused smirk.

“Sorry, Zack,” Aerith said later when he reached her flowerbed. Brows drawn back; her face split into an apologetic smile. “You know how he gets.”

He knew. At least from their brief encounter before. Proud. Cocky. But with a good heart. Zack couldn’t help softening as he watched the boys wrestle.

“So.” He turned to Aerith, who offered him one of those bright, inquisitive looks. A soft little “hm?” that tugged at his heartstrings. Zack fought to contain his bursting emotions as he addressed the issue at hand. He nodded at the children playing at the church. “What’s all this?”

“Oh, Leaf House is having some renovations today, so the teachers asked me to watch over them for the time being.”

The explanation was short and simple, yet it was as though the sky—or, well, the steel sky here in the slums—had crashed down on him.

“Babysitting?”

She met his question with a giggle. “They’re not exactly babies, but, yes, something like that.”

There went his date-with-excitement plan out the window, ripped and blown into smithereens until not a speck of it remained. The tower… The sky…

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Zack shrugged. Well, what could he do if Aerith was already preoccupied? They could save that date for another time. Meanwhile… He sat down next to her, stretching his legs in front of him. A date at the church with a handful of kids in tow wasn’t bad either. Right?

Beside him, Aerith tilted her head to the side. Zack grinned, then noticed the loose hair coming out of her braid. He reached out and slipped it behind her ears. It had been a reflex—the way his hand moved. He only realized it when he spotted the blush coloring Aerith’s cheeks. Even the girl at the flowerbed gasped, quiet. He glanced at her; she ducked her head.

“Hey, Mister.” A bump on his head; Oates stood behind him in that self-important way. The kid should really learn some manners. “Are you going out with Aerith?”

With that question alone, all eyes turned toward him: the wrestling boys, the girl making flower crowns, and a couple others playing with the abandoned piano. The off-key tunes that had filled the church ground to an abrupt halt.

“It’s Zack, Oates,” Zack said into the sudden silence. “I thought we’d introduced ourselves to each other.”

Oates frowned, the way six-year-olds frowned when they were being told off, and folded his arms. “I don’t remember telling you my name, Mister.” Zack struggled to maintain his composure. “Well, are you or are you not?”

“I am.” More gasps, mostly from the girls. The boys only stared, some wide-eyed, some skeptical, including Oates.

Oates looked over his shoulder at his friends. Determined nods from all around. Zack had a bad feeling about it.

When the boy's gaze returned to him, he pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Then we challenge you! Come on, guys! We need to see if this Mister guy is right for Aerith or not!”

The air split as cries erupted everywhere—boys and girls and even the kids at the piano. Before he could prepare himself, the little rascals had leaped from all sides, tackling him to the ground.

***

Aerith jumped when the children pushed Zack to the ground. Muffled sounds came from that squirming pile of bodies. They pinned him around his waist and straddled him on his chest. A couple climbed up and held his arms to the ground, maneuvering their way around that big sword hilt behind his back.

“Got it!” one of them yelled. A small square object held high in his grasp.

“Hey, you little, that’s my wallet!”

They squealed and shouted and laughed, jumped away when Zack tried to get up. “Spread out!” came a voice louder than the others, and they did, spreading out to the benches and the fallen beams and the room behind the altar. Zack pushed himself off his back, leaped to his feet, then put his hands on his hips. He scanned the church, a little frown playing across his lips.

“Lost something?” Aerith couldn’t help but ask. She pressed her lips together to stop herself from giggling.

“My wallet,” Zack said under his breath. “I know they’re good kids and it’s got nothing much but…” He stopped, glanced sideways at Aerith on the flowerbed. “Nothing,” he muttered.

It was unusual to see him blush, but there it was, the pink shades on his cheeks. She took a picture of it in her mind then saved it in her heart, shifting her attention back to the flowers by her knees, only to feel a stare at the side of her head. Leila, who'd been making crowns, was looking at her. Aerith arched her brows in a silent question, but before neither of them could say anything…

“Look!” Another call came. One of the older boys—Basil—waved a piece of paper in the air. “I found something!”

In the blink of an eye, Zack had disappeared from her side and crossed the church’s length. "Give that back!" she heard him say, and when Basil refused, running to the other side of the church, leaping over benches and hiding behind pillars, Zack quickened his pace. He caught the boy from behind and wrestled for his wallet. Soon, the other children had crowded around them, helping Basil keep his hold on the paper. Aerith snorted. Never had she thought she would see the day when Zack Fair wrestled with a child. That paper had to be very important.

“Are you really going out with that man, Aerith?”

The voice was soft; Leila looked at her with big, brown eyes. Curious, wary.

“I am.”

The frown deepened. The girl looked back down at the crown in her hand. Almost finished, Aerith noticed. Just a little more touch. Behind her, Zack shouted, “A-ha! Got it!” She glanced back just enough to see the fluttering paper caught between his index and middle fingers, before another boy—Finn—leaped from the nearest bench onto Zack’s back and grabbed the paper from his clutch. “Brat—!” Zack swung around trying to catch him, but Finn only clung to his back, laughing with glee.

“Isn’t he from the upper plate?” Leila asked again, pulling Aerith’s attention back to her.

“He is.”

“Aren’t they scary?”

Aerith blinked and stared, before the realization hit her. Like many people of the slums, the only things Leila knew of the upper plate were prejudice and discrepancy, hate and violence. Having to scrap for a living, only to be kicked and shoved by the so-called securities the people they called their government had stationed there; then watching the news and ads on the big monitor at Central District, only to realize how big a difference their lives were. Leila's father was taken to the war, and when they'd refused, those securities had almost crippled her grandfather.

“Zack’s not scary, though.”

“But the sword…” The girl lifted her eyes and looked at the massive sword on Zack’s back.

“He uses that to protect people.” Aerith's smile was warm. “He protected me before. I’m sure he’d protect you with it too.”

The nine-year-old still didn’t look convinced. Maybe there was something, anything, Aerith could use to show the girl that Zack was harmless. A thought just occurred to her mind when, suddenly, a weight pressed itself on her back.

Oof!

“Aerith, look!”

Oates had climbed onto her back, arms dangling down from around her neck. He waved a small piece of paper in front of her, where she glimpsed her face, smiling, on it.

“Got you!” The weight disappeared; Zack stood behind her, holding Oates on both arms as though the boy weighed nothing more than a sack of rice. “Stop squirming and hand over the photo.”

“Does the photo worth more than the wallet to you!?”

“Yes! Now give it—“

The photo lay on Aerith’s lap, now crooked after having so many hands wrestling for it. She picked it up and turned it around. Her own smiling face looked back at her. Hair braided back; a little smudge of dirt on her cheek; she'd crouched before her flowers as she'd tended to them, eyes crinkling at an ear-to-ear grin. When did Zack take this?

“Why would you put a picture of me there instead of your parents?” she asked the first question that popped into her mind. Zack had left home when he was thirteen without ever telling them. She’d thought they’d be foremost in his mind. But she knew the answer, even before she looked up and saw his beet-red face.

“And why are you blushing?” Oates asked.

“Oh, shut up!” He finally let Oates go. The children had gathered around them then, their expressions ranging from bemused to mischievous grins.

“You’re blushing too, Aerith,” Leila noted beside her.

She believed she was. Her cheeks felt hot. She met Zack’s sky-blue eyes, and as she beamed, he started beaming too.

***

Aerith asked Zack to tell the kids about his adventures—adventures, because the kids shouldn’t hear about missions or wars; adventures where he went to all corners of the world to protect people and their homes.

“Who wants to hear about my adventures?” Zack asked then. Silence…

“I wanna know more about your sword,” Oates said. “Why is it so big?"

Another voice asked, "Is it real?”

“Of course it’s real!”

“Can I touch it?” Zack didn’t realize a kid was standing behind him, and when he reached out to touch the steel blade, Aerith and Zack shouted at him to stop. The kid jumped, retracting his hand as quickly as it’d come.

“That’s dangerous, Finn!” Aerith said from her seat.

“But it looks so cool!”

“And also very heavy and sharp,” Zack said. “It could easily cut your arm off if you so much as touch it wrong.” Gasps and grunts and nervous gulps. Despite the glare Aerith was shooting him—maybe he should have toned down the gore, though he’d only spoken truth with it—he thought that was enough to scare them away. But then a voice spoke up:

“But you can use it.” It was the girl who’d played the piano before. Jet-black hair tied in twin tails.

“That’s because I’m trained in combat.”

“Show us!” she said, prompting the others to chant yeah, show us, show us.

At the urging, Zack broke into a grin, wide and proud. He told them to give him a bit of space, and they stepped back. Then he reached over and behind his back and curled his fingers around the hilt. He’d show them. Yes, they would see that he was the coolest guy they ever saw.

Pulling the Buster Sword from his back one-handed was an easy feat. He gave it a wide swing in the air before landing it, tip-down, on the church’s wooden floor. Oohs and ahhs greeted his ears. Even Aerith’s emerald-green eyes were wide, joining the children’s cheer. Then he lifted the sword with both hands and bent his knees in his battle stance.

“Want me to show you some battle moves?” he asked them, and they did, so he obliged.

The “show” ended with a series of claps, thrilled cries, and jumps. What skepticism and mischief he’d seen in their eyes were now gone, replaced by nothing short of awe. Zack couldn’t help the smirk that he’d somehow won their hearts.

“What do you do, Zack?” the oldest of the boys, he’d heard Aerith called him Basil before, asked.

“I’m—“ Then he stopped, and he remembered how Aerith had talked about SOLDIER and Turks and Shinra when they first met, and figured he should omit that part. “I’m a mercenary,” he said instead. “I help people whenever they need me.”

“Like how?”

“Finding lost items?”

“Rescuing a cat?”

“Yeah… And, like, bigger schemes.” The kids looked at one another. “Like protecting people from monsters.” More oohs and ahhs. Zack felt proud of himself.

But then, someone said, “I wanna have something like it.” It was Oates. He turned to his friends. “Just imagine: we can be our own Protection Squad! Defeating evil and helping people around the slums.” The idea immediately appealed to everyone’s minds. Before Zack could do anything about it, they’d already crowded around him and begged him for a sword of their own.

Zack broke into a small, weak smile as he tried to figure how to handle this new onslaught. He looked at Aerith for help, but her features reflected the resignation he felt. She offered a shrug, a silent permission to do what he thought best. In that case…

“Want me to make you wooden swords then?” The children’s eyes sparkled at that. They nodded, crowding closer that Zack had to step back and raise his hands, shoulders shaking in a chuckle. “Well, if you can find a good chunk of wood and some sawing equipment, I think I can make some.”

They'd bolted out the church’s double doors before he realized maybe he shouldn’t have told them to grab a saw. But Aerith was laughing, and she patted the spot next to her. Zack sat down with a loud sigh.

“You think they’re okay handling a saw?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, the carpenters won't let them hold it that easily,” Aerith said.

Zack wondered about that. Seeing how the kids had been, it wouldn't be a stretch to think they'd find some way to bring a saw there. But he was too tired to go look for them, so he hoped the carpenter would be so kind as to bring it himself. He sighed again, feeling the tension rolling off his shoulders. Who would’ve thought babysitting was even more exhausting than going on a mission?

Warmth enveloped his head. When he looked, Aerith was patting him, a bright smile on her face. “Great job today.”

And Zack would have broken into a grin, would have leaned in and rested his head on her shoulder and claimed it as energy recovering, if he had not noticed the girl on the flowerbed still weaving flowers into a crown. Aerith seemed to notice his line of sight too, because then she introduced the girl as Leila. In a whisper, she added that the girl had lost her family in the war, so she was a little taciturn around armed strangers.

The reason Aerith had suggested for him to talk about his adventures finally dawned on him. Zack scooted to the girl and peeked beneath the brown bangs. Big, brown eyes were focused on the flower crown in her hands. He noticed she’d braided her hair to match Aerith’s.

“You’re not going with the others?” he asked.

Leila shook her head. When she spoke, her voice was small. “I’m not really into those sword stuffs.”

“What are you into then?”

She lifted her flower crown, then continued weaving in more flowers. Zack fumbled for more topics, but before he could, Leila had risen from her seat. She walked over to him, then plopped the flower crown over his head. Zack blinked.

“That glow in your eyes—I’ve seen it. They took my dad away to the war, and he never came back.” Leila pursed her lips. “But you’re a good guy, Zack. At least, I think so. Everyone likes you. Aerith, too. And, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh so hard like that before.” Zack blinked again, and this time, the girl softened her features. “She really likes you.”

With that, she turned toward Aerith and plopped another flower crown on top of her head.

“Well, I’m off. Think I’m going to catch up with the others and make sure they don’t hurt themselves.”

Her footsteps disappeared behind the double doors. The silence that followed stretched awkwardly. When Zack turned his head, Aerith was still staring at the church's entrance, half in daze.

“You really like me, she said.”

She jerked, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. A frown formed across her lips, even as a deep shade of red tinged her cheeks. “She didn’t emphasize it, you know.”

Even so, that was not a denial. A slow grin split his features. Zack crawled to her side, then gazed at her scarlet face.

“What?” she asked.

His reply was a soft kiss to her cheeks that rendered her speechless. “I really like you to.” He beamed at her stunned face. It wasn't much of a date, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

~ END ~