#ch: ARE YOU SIMPLY GOING TO SLEEP YOUR LIFE AWAY PRINCESS? VINES WRAP AROUND YOUR HANDS&LEGS; THEY PRICK; AND YOU WAKE UP MAD | aerith

[escapekissed]

people really seem to hate aerith’s characterization in cc, but i. love it. so much. we only see glimpses of her past in ff7 proper, her mother saying she was always a cheerful girl, but we get things in ff7r that contradict that, that show more, as well as ff7 itself. she says she’s never good at anything, that she always quits. we see that she talks to her death mother but has never admitted that even to her adoptive mother. we see that she thinks she has no friends even tho she interacts very frequently with children both in cc and pretty much everywhere she goes someone has something nice to say about how helpful and kind and friendly she is.

i think we can chalk this disparity of what she thinks of herself vs what other people think of her as ‘that time in between being a bubbly child that performed happiness so her mother wouldn’t worry or throw her away’ and ‘the time after zack in which she actively tried to be a braver and more friendly, helpful person who could fight for herself.’

i think aerith has a lot of issues. as a child, she feared being abandoned. she had two safe spots---the church and her home, and even then, the turks always knew where she was, though they left her alone. it made her cling to the mother she was safe with even more, the places where the flowers grew were places where aerith could grow as well. but she always knew that this peace and growth was temporary. like a flower, one day she would be plucked and killed, like her mother was, and if that wasn’t enough, i hc her mother was a peculiar kind of woman who didn’t particularly want aerith and used her as an emotional crutch, and now that she’s dead, is basically the voice of aerith’s anxiety over not being ‘normal’ and instead being part of a ethnicity of chosen people doomed to die. she hears so much death, every where she goes, every where she turns. the spirits are friendly---but they are also gloomy, and sad. she can hear those in the lifestream, but she can also hear the voices in-between, caught and stuck, asking for her help and an open sky, and change---while she knows it must be necessary, frightens her, because she views herself as weak and broken.

they performed experiments on aerith. nothing that gave her super strength or mako eyes---but enough that she would always view herself as a freak, who the rug could be taken out from under any moment, so she would go back to torture. it seems such an inevitability its easy to give herself up for marlene. even when she thinks she’ll be bred with a talking dog----she has always assume the worst is to come, and that she can’t fix any of it, even if she tries.

zack does not give her the hope that she is ‘normal’, that she will live a very long time and be fabulously happy, surrounded by loved ones for the rest of her days. no, instead he gives her a better hope, a new dream. the soldiers scare her because they are ‘not normal’ just like aerith is ‘not normal.’ and being ‘not normal’ is being a monster. zack shows her that even with all that soldier has done which she knows by heart is evil, even tho zack has been experimented on and has gone through great loss, his smile and his heart and his sense of humor and his blunt silly mean streak are painfully, wonderfully beautifully loveable. and she can be as well, even if she is a freak, even if she is frightened, even if, just as ever soldier is, she is destined to be experimented on and then die for shinra’s goals.

he makes her braver. she tilts her chin up, she makes more jokes, she has her own sense of humor that can sometimes be mean and sarcastic in its teasing, but is always out of a place of compassion and the ease with which zack seemed to stroll through the world that surprisingly actually comes to aerith in a way it never REALLY did to zack, the perpetually socially inept when it mattered.

aerith had always used her kindness, her friendliness, her smiles as a method for keeping her mother alive and not weeping. and then she used her bubbliness, her persistence in getting back up again and never letting anyone see her sweat to make sure her new mother didn’t throw her away to the turks.

she still has abandonment issues. still feels like she has to protect the world. still feels like she’s always being watched. but if she is being watched---she’s going to give them a show. if she is going to die---she’s going to have fun until that last final moment. and if she is going to die alone---she’s going to be brave, she’s going to stand up for herself and whoever’s there with her. she’ll sacrifice herself, because that’s what aerith does, she puts herself down to make other flowers grow and she protects them from being stepped on by anyone else---but she’ll do the right thing even if it scares her. that’s what zack taught her. that she’s worthy of love and kindness and bravery, even when she doesn’t feel like she is.

and wouldn’t you want to spend one last day with someone that made you feel that way? wouldn’t you go on a whole adventure with a new boy that reminds you so much of him in all the wrong ways so much so that you can almost push the puzzle pieces together---even when he hurts you, you can laugh it off, you can consider it part of your sacrifice? wouldn’t you want to help him? wouldn’t you want to see the sky with him?

you do see it eventually. and it’s so big and so vast, you finally realize every scared, sad voice in your head has a place in this world. and so do you. 

at least for now. 

no one lives forever, right? but you can make it matter. like zack made it matter.

he still has a place in this world. in your heart. he holds you up like that bow holds up your hair. and when you’re sad---really, really sad. you hear his voice. and you wish you didn’t.

[escapekissed]

❝You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain.❞ @destructiveglitch

Aerith raises her eyebrows so high they threaten to shoot past her hairline. She has to bite her tongue to keep from bitterly ranting and raving about what The UA has done to her people---and that’s something that doesn’t come up much anymore, not around Cadillac at least. 

She’s grown used to the cadets seeking greatness and integalactic recognition even as they destroy what remains of the galaxy. She’s used to Cadillac’s underlings squabbling for any grip over the Mother Ship, fighting for what limited resources The UA has left after destroying so much and leaving so little in their wake&waste. 

She has bitten so long and so often, she imagines bruises as she brushes her tongue---feels her own indentations and self-soothing incantations every morning even after snoring the night away after working her ass off to fool these people if she managed to sleep at all, in the throes of guilt and tensed muscles. She combs though her curls and thinks of freedom for herself and all that remain, the way she did when her Mother brushed her hair and warned of the People In The Sky---she thinks of her ever-weeping Mother, her Foster Mother that tried so hard to protect her, taught her even better how to fake a smile through no fault or intention of her own. But some days, she wonders if Cadillac is both less and more than he appears---a God who cannot forsee the true cost of his own greed and self-serving nature as the Embodiment of Destruction. A God that cannot tell he can choose to stop it.

Sometimes, she thinks she sees her own brown eyes reflected in blue, vengeful, and angry---not just at the system destoying the galaxy, but their own adherence to it.

It makes her feel seasick. Spacesick? That has to be a thing, right? It can’t just be confusion, sympathy bleeding into loathing into something more sinister and loving, as all Aerith really understands anymore is anger and love, and getting all jumbled & tangled, a knot in her stomach. 

She draws her fingers through Cadillac’s hair, his head in her lap, gentle and cautious, careful not to tear. She’s watched Cadillac kill with glee now. Push buttons and command others in ways that are despicable---wrong. But when he’s gentle with her like this, away in his chambers, a kindred spirit of destruction with The Rebel Who Can Hear And See The Spirits Of The Dead. All she sees is his weary soul. How much all this is weighing on him, though he can’t admit it out loud. And how that just gets repressed---into fighting harder, into following his own violent directive more intensely.

He should feel powerful. He should feel strong. And he does, in the moment, basking in the bloodshed. But when it’s all gone---when it’s time for the next orders to come in, to collect the resources, record the tallies---he seems to disappear even when he’s still in the room, brooding in the shadows, lifeless and listless, or hesitating to speak, even when spoken to. It’s like a trance he goes into. It seems so similar---to what Aerith feels, how she wants to act---when a million voices screaming out in pain suddenly burst into one in her head, calling her name, calling for their own pound of flesh.

They are both haunted by ghosts, and rage, and strange fascination masquerading as affection; as Cadillac, she knows, must be wary of her mysterious intentions in some way or another. He’s smart. Perhaps destruction only leads to self-destruction. The cancer that hits you after you choke getting too close to your own nuclear bomb site.

“Gods fear pain?” She smiles, tilting her head down to look at him in the eye, her braids falling over her shoulders into the simulated gravity from technology that she has to assume has been stolen from someone like everything on this ship was. “I didn’t even know Gods could feel pain.”

“I suppose it makes sense. It must be awful scary for you, to feel something... that everyone thinks you shouldn’t feel. Especially yourself.”

“It probably makes you feel weak, right?” Her smile falters, for just a second. And then she pokes Cadillac square in the forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles of his frown and pinching his cheeks in her hand. “Relax, Caddy-Lilacs! There’s nobody stronger than you in all the world. You’ve proved that already, haven’t you?”

[escapekissed]

@alnaari [ LIFT ] stepping stones

They say that Marie Antoinette said ‘Let Them Eat Cake’---but that wasn’t true. Marie Antoinette was certainly most everything we think of when we photograph starlets in velvet gowns with their hair in white curls ten feet high---she was rich, and fashionable, and by all accounts beautiful; and by even a layman’s standards, incredibly unlucky for a royal all the same: drowned in scandal and bad press that would make even the most inscrutable papparazi of today blush with distaste. (If you drew Taylor Swift on a phallus-centaur-type ostrich-horse and called her a lesbian in the same brazen, foaming breath, you would probably be canceled by at least some faction of twitter. You would at the very least start a hashtag.)

Was she out of touch? You tell Aerith. She owned a whole villa in Versaille’s backyard that was meant to always smell of fresh-baked bread, which meant she paid someone to bake fresh baked bread there, all day, everyday. Marie Antoinette liked to show all her friends that she had real chickens that laid real eggs---and thus, she paid someone, before each visit, to wipe down the eggs.

Did Marie Antoinette care about poor people? Experts say that Marie Antoinette ran into numerous orphans on her travels, laying hungry and desolate in the streets. She would feed them, clothe them, and pay to send them off to be well-educated. So, at the very least, she cared about poor people when they were right in front of her face, staring down her carriage like the barrel of a gun to shoot them out of the gutter, chicken ass-first right into high society.

Aerith supposes that’s sort of how she started out with Nadia. (She can practically smell the yeast rising now. Thinking of it now, idly, she supposes baking bread all day isn’t a bad gig, though it would get rather boring.)

Nadia saw something special in Aerith’s sweat-and-dirt encrusted face and grimy nails. The dusty pink dress, the hard-calloused fingers. Nadia had been looking for someone in particular----a tarot reader, and although Aerith did not entirely fit the bill and had only done amateur readings herself, she was perfectly happy to lie to make her way into the Countess’s castle, for a roof over her head, and a garden---a real garden---where she could plant to her heart’s content.

Nadia had given Aerith all she had ever wanted. She seemed to find Aerith’s peculiarities, her quirks, her sly people-pleasing tricks that sometimes bordered on teasing and sometimes bordered on bitter----all very charming and quaint. The countess treated Aerith like a Princess. And beyond all those traits that Aerith had shown nearly all her supposed ‘betters’---and the Countess was more a supposed ‘better’ than anyone, wasn’t she, so Aerith did put on quite the show---Aerith had no idea how to be treated well and kindly. Especially over a lie, though Nadia had become quite fond of her tarot readings, and took them to heart, much to Aerith’s deepening guilt and dismay.

Nadia offers Aerith her hand to step over a puddle in the gardens. The storm looming on the horizon overhead seems to speak of what Aerith remembers of the tensions in the streets. Aerith herself had been quite vocally anti-royal, before she met The Countess. Now her old friends sell papers for pennies, in which Aerith’s huge head swims in diamonds, covered in expensive furs and suspicious lipstick kisses.

They put the Princess de Labelle’s head on a spike outside dear old Marie’s window to taunt her during her period of house arrest. Another insult to pile on to the numerous triggering allegations against her, the death of her supposed lesbian lover----it was her fault, according to the revolutionaries who made sure she saw it. Aerith supposes, at least, in her final moments, Marie knew she did have some part to play in it at all, however briefly. Out of touch though she might have been, always playing defensive as she tailored her image and her household and her hair as best she was able, given the circumstances... her last words were an apology to her executioner.

“Sorry,” Aerith says aloud, when she realizes she has not yet taken The Countess’s hand. “I didn’t mean to...” She trails off. “Make you wait.”

[escapekissed]

@destructiveglitch [  send❓+ a name, and my muse will explain how they feel about them. ]  ❓ how do we feel about ms cadillac, aerith? speak only the truth and nothing but the truth!

Aerith tosses her head back, her red velvet rainbow of curls shaking behind her as if struck or tugged loose. But the ponytail remains in place, and so too does Ms. Aerith, hands on her plump waist, her thick, messy eyebrows going high enough to raise her eyelashes just so, enough to express the mirth of the coy smile that most certainly rests in her lovetorn, silly, ambitious gaze.

“Ms. Cadillac? You mean my hero?” Her eyelashes flutter, her head shakes the picture of the dainty damsel that made the noblemen’s eyes glow when they were fooled, and glower when they were not. “The one that saved me from being abused and belittled for the rest of my life---and took me on the grandest adventure I could’ve  hoped to imagine?” Her silly eyes threaten to grow wet, even at the ‘joke’, and the light brown skin around her eyes grows hot and heavy. Best to stick to jokes.

“Do you mean the womanizing woman that stole my heart and a thousand others who happened to catch his eye?” A joke, of course. But one that hurts, a bit. That begets more her jealousy over not being the true hero of her own story and world---that this blue-faced, devilishly handsome woman is the only one that could’ve saved them all. She’s so grateful it hurts her. Her jealousy is Juliet’s self-pointed dagger. There is no poison off Cadillac’s lips to drink. Just the taste of another world---a better world, that only he can make, a journey that she cannot truly be taken on. 

“Do you mean the---bravest, kindest, silliest, most charming, wonderful person I have ever met---who doesn’t know how good he is? Doesn’t know how grateful we all are? How much we’ve grown to love him? The best friend I’ve ever had, the best lover, the best----the best partner.” Her breath hitches, her palms gripping her fingers so hard her bitten nails leave white crescent-prints. She is defiant now---against Cadillac himself and his inner demons she knows well enough at this point, but also all who cross him.

“I love him. That’s all I can say. He’s strong when I'm not. And he’s strong enough to hold me when I need somebody to hold me... when I actually manage to let him.” Her hands fall to her side. She looks down, sullen, quiet, tired, like she has been her whole life before Cadillac, and, she fears, exactly how she will be after he inevitably leaves her.

[escapekissed]

i think the tragedy of aerith is that in many ways her death feels so inevitable now in hindsight because she’s a woman, she’s a love interest multiple times over, but also her manner of coping IS sacrificing herself for others, and ignoring the bad things they’ve done (to HER especially), and expressing her trauma thru being silly and forgiving and [amy dunne voice] The Cool Girl friend that eats hot dogs and loves drag and makes jokes but is never quite as smart or as funny or cool as the protagonist is, and always follows his lead. to the point where when cloud beats her to the point of uncosciousnes, she just kind of smiles, and walks away, and acts like its no big deal at all!

like there’s a reason people ship aerith with the turks and with sephiroth and it’s not just because she’s a pretty girl and the turks&sephiroth are hot. (though of course thats part of it) i feel at least on some level people understand how bad the turks are just like aerith understands how bad they are, how they actively plot to turn her over the hojo &/or kill her or use her. i feel like in aerith’s eyes, and the fandom’s, aerith’s death and her pain is necessary, and unavoidable. and both in the fandom eye’s and aerith’s the only way to deal with her own pain and her death is to love with her full heart everyone she meets with wild abandon & much less scrutiny than someone without trauma who is not destined to die. aerith HAS to love everyone, aerith HAS to want to fix everyone and teach them to love, and that’s definitely such a big part of who she is but it also. sucks? it sucks!!!!

i don’t know if im explaining this but in aerith’s own mind she exists solely to love and heal and teach others. and in every meta post u see about the remake’s plot, and in the narratives after the og put forth, that was the point of her existence. but it’s so sad. it’s such a symbol for every woman who puts herself in a hyperempathetic, women’s role of caretaking and loving. she doesn’t get to be her own person. she just gets to love, and to die. and she denies herself anger except when she can use it to be cutesy or to protect other people (never herself). and she denies herself sadness except when she can use her tears as ‘healing rain.’

and she just. she hears everyone else’s pain. all the fucking time. she literally hears the voices of the dead. but she never lets. anyone hear hers? she’s so secretive and she thinks it’s for everyone else’s benefit but she never lets anyone all the way in bc she’s so concerned with how they feel, how she’ll make them feel.

broe it hurts lmao i hate it here.

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my aerith... has a deeper, earthier voice than the english va in the remake. if i had to pick a voice claim, it would be susan egan (aka the voice of megara and rose quartz who ironically, if combined, COULD potentially form aerith)

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tifa vs aerith tifa AND aerith !

i feel like tifa and aerith are very. automatically important to each other bc they fulfill the same role in their respective communities---the nice, pretty girl next door that fights for u, and will talk u through ur troubles, but while on the surface aerith is bolder, bubblier and funnier, and tifa is quiet and more shy and reserved....

both of these girls respond to their trauma in ways the other person can not only understand and pick out IMMEDIATELY under the guise of ‘girl power’ (it’s really that they’re both incredibly emotionally intuitive and used to playing ‘therapist’ in their own ways as a lot of mentally illgirls end up doing), but in ways that are just different enough that the other person can pick up the slack.

both of their responses to trauma are with FIGHTING THRU IT, but keeping their own feelings of insecurity and self-doubt locked away while they try desperately to fight for OTHER people. they never, ever focus on themselves except if its to make a joke (in aerith’s case) or to remind someone of how much they are supported in relation to them (for example, tifa will remind people of how highly she thinks of them, their past together and things they’ve done as a team).

they like to keep conversations light, they don’t like to dwell too long on their insecurities or pain if it DOES even NATURALLY just come up. tifa will refocus the conversation on you. aerith will make things sillier and more easy breezy covergirl. 

they both play a supportive role. they both let cloud be the hero, the leader, the tactician, the muscle, the fighter. their own emotional needs as people and as working parts of their relationship fall by the wayside when it comes to cloud. they often don’t feel like they’re own people (not just from the audience’s perspective in many case’s), but instead, in their own version of reality. 

because the truth is in lots of little ways, aerith and tifa show they don’t believe in themselves as independent people. aerith says she’s a quitter. tifa says she wants cloud to save her one day. and they internalize these beliefs about themselves as so many young women do, and they stave off other people’s attempts to help them grow as people and to fight for themselves. and it’s so easy to. because so many people actually DO just want to talk about themselves and their own problems, or talk about nothing at all but tifa and aerith are so good at picking out problems that they can make other people love them by seeming to solve all their problems anyway.

it’s easy, as a mom friend, and as a woman in any situation, to take care of people and not get taken care of in turn.

but tifa and aerith never let that happen.

aerith always sees how emotionally honest tifa is, but that tifa is only ever emotionally honest with how she feels other people are strong to hype THEM up. aerith is able to bring out tifa’s self-confidence by joking around with her in silly flirty ways about how cool and powerful tifa is, in a way that tifa would probably balk at if it was coming from anyone who didn’t seem as casual as aerith.

tifa, on the other hand, helps aerith with HER self confidence and dealing with her trauma by being her emotionally honest and intuitive self out loud. she points out little things nobody else seems to notice about aerith that make aerith want to weep into her hands sometimes.

but the best thing about their friendship is they never FORCE themselves to fix each other. instead, they’re just each other’s hypewomen. they’re just kind to each other, and they get the exact same amount of kindness and care and attention back in turn. and they find they’re so similar---they can talk about EVERYTHING together, bc as it happens they just compliment each other on EVERYTHING.

i really do feel that the most major disagreements from aerith and tifa are over the smallest silliest things. they almost can’t handle disagreeing with each other because they’re so in love with each other that when they think for even a SECOND the other one may not ADORE them anymore, they really just feel like shit. and they don’t argue by yelling at each other, but everyone can feel the like. heaviness of the room without each other’s warm lights lifting each other up. they both become each other’s emotional support girlfriends!!!!

they teach each other their OWN WORTH and sometimes they depend a little too heavy on each other because of it but also they’re MENTALL ILL AND ON THE WORLD’S LONGEST WORST VACATION GIVE THEM A BREAK lol

[escapekissed]

aerith gets anchovies on her pizza just to gross everybody else out but she also loves them. (her favorite topping is actually spinach, onions, & mushrooms)

cloud: AREN’T YOU VEGAN?

aerith: anchovies aren’t animals they’re like pure salt.

tifa: aerith!!!! no!!!!!

aerith: tonight u will get anchovy-breath kisses!!!!!

tifa: no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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yesterday i was like ‘aerith has kind of a 60/70s hippie energy’ and today i find out she’ an AQUARIUS. gag!!!!!!! that’s where it REALLY comes from baybee. age of aquarius.

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a large part of aerith’s character to me and the aerith i want to portray is. anxiety and trauma, marked by relentless optimism, love, and most of all WHIMSY for everyone save herself.

aerith experiences a lot of self-doubt. she calls herself a quitter, she seems to WANT to die if that’s good for everyone else, and she willingly hands herself over to shinra for the good of others re-exposing herself to her own trauma....

but she also deals with this by not JUST retreating inwards and ignoring her own pain and suffering. she deals with it with a true love of life. she talks about how much she loves humanity. she can hear the voices of people living their lives, trying their best every day in midgar on the plate and off, and she can’t imagine hating them even if they all are complicit in so much evil.

people are WONDERFUL to aerith. life is WONDERFUL to aerith. she’s so, so scared of it, of living, of the sky, of herself---but she deals with that fear with HUMOR and DELIGHT, smiles and jokes with everyone she meets---even those who want to hurt her---and while this seems an impossible response to trauma, to deal with so much tragedy with laughter & fun instead of merely locking herself away----

aerith wants her freedom & independence more than anything, and to be kind and charming, and so, when the opportunity presents itself, she leaps at it.

aerith may be a quitter in her own mind, but she’ll try harder than anybody you know to be true and authentic to her silly self. she may not tell u the complete truth about herself, but her funny silly hippie flower girl persona is true to who she is and what she believes. that there are flowers, everywhere, beneath your feet, and they can grow, even in a desert, even thru the floorboards, even tho it makes no sense at all. and isn’t that beautiful? isn’t it beautiful to love something so much ur heart hurts? isn’t it funny? isn’t life just funny how everything works out perfectly, every single time---even when people get hurt and people leave you---tomorrow the sun will rise in the sky, and the flowers will crane up their stems and take it all in.

her character growth, for me, is learning to see herself not just as the funny girl that everyone else loves---but as a part of the world that is worthy of her OWN love, that deserves to exist just like the flowers & the sun. she’s worth fighting for, and she’s more than worth keeping alive.

[escapekissed]

@pcisoner​ [ AERITH & TABBY ( ANGEL AU ) ] “You are an angel in the classical sense; with a thousand eyes and a thousand-yard stare. What do you see? Do you see ME at all?”

Aerith smiles in the way she usually does, with the fluttering of her broken wings, a baby bird that jumped far too soon from the nest. The sides of her mouth crinkle and the world seems to pan away from her many eyes and pale halo of teeth. Her claws poke just a little too hard into the holy flesh that would otherwise qualify as her forearm, as she crosses them and shakes her head. Her hair flows freely like wine as she does so, and each feather and strand of hair seems to glow to the point of contrition. Tabby’s lofty, human-passing apartment seems to melt away, and the Earth below their feet seems to apologize to Aerith for her great tragedy. That she has always seen Tabby, and loved her for her all judgement & the creation of all that sin. That she will never be able to say it out loud without her heart & body breaking like bread and Heaven torn asunder into crumbs and bloody roadkill feathers. Tabby is the car and Tabby is the little Catholic girl with chubby fingers, eating communion wafers like Graham crackers laced with hot marshmellow goop and chocolate. Aerith is the priest and Aerith is the campfire---and she burns.

“Do you WANT me to see you?” Aerith tilts her head and the wings at her ankles and neck shudder as they try to flap and fail. Two eyes close with good humor, but not the rest. The rest stare at Tabby, equal parts longing & lack of trust. “You’re not afraid?”

Aerith is. To love a demon is not to love Hell. She burns, and she aches, and she does not know which is worse---love or sin or pain, or if any of the three are any different at all and not just one and the same.

“I see a hot demon girl with a great ass and great taste in human clothes.” Aerith suppresses a giggle behind a hand, and it smooths its way over her mouth in a soothing circle before she drops it. “Not to mention---my best friend in the whole world. And my hero!” Aerith clasps at least four hands together on either cheek. She looks angelic, and pretty, and so broken and sad. It’s hard not to love her, because that’s what she wants. But Tabby is different---than every angel in heaven. Which just makes Aerith even more desperate for her affections, just as she has been every moment she’s watched her, which seems like an eternity at least, more or less.

Aerith waggles her eyebrows. “Do you see me?”

[escapekissed]

@irnmaidn​ [ AERITH & CASS ]  “ you want me to punch him in the face ?? ”

It’s a bit of a dance, Aerith does. Selling flowers doesn’t pay the bills. Neither do her pittance from healing magics, or fortune telling---to the point that sometimes she just considers going back home and hiding away from it all, the bill collectors and the evergreen barrage of warrants out for her arrest---but the Seven Kingdoms expand far beyond the realm of the small-minded, superfluous, overly authoritative and greedy. It’s a big, wide, wonderful world out there. And Aerith simply must do what Aerith must to continue exploring it.

And that sometimes means hustling at pool&cards and pickpocketing the fools that are dumb enough to try to fight her afterwards.

There’s an elegance to her trickery, a delicate finesse. Her ‘who, me?’ charms and her pretty face will only take her so far. She has to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, or er, something like that(---okay, so she never actually learned the rules to the games she cheats at and gets by mostly on dumb luck, so sue her! Aerith’s a Queen, but the card up her sleeves are all Aces---)but the point is, Aerith always knows when to get the Hell out of dodge and when she’s picked a bone too big to chew.

This particular ruffian is about twice her height and four times her width in hairy back muscle alone. She’s about to EXIT stage left, (pursued by bear), when a gorgeous woman who Aerith pictures for a moment with raven wings the color of her hair, that spring forth from her shining knight armor like an angel’s feathers, steps in, stage right, instead.

A knight is bad news, considering the bounty on Aerith’s head. But, Aerith wants to see this play out. Who doesn’t dream of a beautiful lady knight with catlike eyes shining like jewels, stepping in and fighting all your battles? Aerith ignores the warmth of her cheeks and her eyes light up just as brightly. She scoots behind Cass and slowly nudges her forward, hands poking her shoulder blades, more impressed than timid. (And she eyes her coinpurse, just a little. Nah. Not yet, anyway.)

Aerith gives Cass a thumb up and blows a kiss at the back of her head. “Go get ‘em, tiger!”

[escapekissed]

@serifirot​ [ AERITH & SEPH ]

“Life's a tickin' time bomb, sick and tired of trying... Birthdays just remind me I'm closer to dying. Life was easier when on the verge of seventeen. Can't buy alcohol, I'm taking shots of Listerine. I'll figure it out, eventually. I can never decide who I should be. The older I get, seems like the less that I know. Trying to be more than, ever before. It's hard adulting, avoiding self-growth. Adolescence is a mid-quarter life crisis.”

Aerith speaks between a dream of a future and a dream of her own death, and neither feel quite real or even lucid especially now. She holds her sibling’s hand in hers, tongue in cheek, then stuck straight out. Her adolescent angst has no meaning now. Her life has been relatively easy, compared to Seph. She hopes they get that. That it’s all just a joke. That she’s never been able to take anything seriously, just like when they were children. She pulls a flower out of the garden, dirt sticking to the veins of its root. She sticks them whole and fleshy, soft, in Seph’s hand. A reflection of a normal, silly childhood that never was, one where they could throw astroturf in each other’s laps and yell at each other to stop.

“How have you been, Sephy?”

[escapekissed]

@makopoint [ SEND ME HC QUESTIONS ! ]  i would pay real life money to hear you talk about aeriths childhood and her experiences growing up just, slides money over the table, i want to hear abt her scraping her knees and learning to LIVE. give me CONTENT.

aerith is seven years old when she meets elmyra, and until then, all she knows is a weeping mother and blinding fluourescent lights. both seem to flicker in her memories, both seem to sway in the room in time with her throbbing head and sweating skin. she remembers laughing to keep her mother from crying, she remembers her mother loving her more than anything---and she remembers never having to remember, because she can still hear her mother’s voice wailing & whispering her affections, even now.

elmyra is a widow, and she never quite loved her husband the way she always thought she was going to, but her husband wasn’t poor and he certainly loved her, and he left her money. a lot of it, and a nice house, nicer than all the others in the slums, tucked away, and empty besides all the comfortable furniture that could suit a wife and a child. they were meant to have children, one day, and now elmyra felt her prayers had been answered. this must have been her gift for staying with her husband instead of running away the girlfriends that fixed up her house and kissed her cheeks while her husband was away at war. she felt bad for him, and she mourned him, but she knew this could be a better life for she and aerith, if they could both let it be.

elmyra grew up outside the city, she was a farmgirl, and she had tried what felt like a thousand years to grow a single fruit or vegetable in the dirt her husband and her friends laid out for her to no avail. nothing would grow in this city----not a plant and not love and not a child. that’s what she thought until aerith. aerith changed everything.

aerith had never smelled dirt before. aerith had never so much as skinned her knee before (though she wasn’t scared of her own blood or pain as a child, did not so much as blink as elmyra fussed over her boo boos and bruises), and it did not take too many whispers from aerith to her other mother that elmyra began to realize that her new child was different.

she was so different.

she was joyful, she never cried, or fussed, she only laughed, and smiled, and hugged. she wanted constant attention but never begged for it except to tease. she helped with chores and dishes that she did not know how to do as she had never been inside a real house before----and when she went into the garden? buds began to sprout beneath her feet as she danced for her mother. when she fell in the heels elmyra’s friends (who adored the little trans princess) had let her borrow---weeds sprouted beneath her feet and aerith called them flowers.

aerith was not permitted to leave the grounds. elmyra had taken her on errands, once, with her friends, and they had all felt followed. aerith was a special girl, and men want to hurt special girls. elmyra didn’t mean to, but to keep her daughter safe, she would have to keep her trapped in an ivory tower full of what remained of the city’s sunlight and aerith’s own sunflowers. that would have to be good enough. and it was, for a time.

but aerith was a mischevious girl, and it never could be good enough for long.

aerith said she’d never traveled by rooftop. and that’s true. but she has explored every crevice of the slums and under the plate. she knows the city like the back of her hand. and she’s felt the stares of the turks on her back all the while.

this is where her fear of quitting comes from----she leaves the house, she feels eyes, she jokes out loud and starts LOUD, JOYFUL DISTRACTIONS and then she runs home to mother, and has since she was ten years old. she was eleven, when she started practicing her magic, honing it to protect herself. her well worn staff is from her mother’s friends, who to this day come over and watch aerith dance and strut through the house for them in heels and feather boas from wall market odes to the oldies.

aerith’s childhood was one of love, and understanding, mud-stained dresses, spending hours and hours with her mother planting seeds and tending to the soft earth in a secret garden, safe from the world, her mother watching her hair grow and teaching her how to braid it and part it to keep it out of her eyes. (aerith still parts her hair that same way, to make her smile.) dancing in the rain, picking flowers and making mother’s day macaroni cards, in all ways being the greatest love of her mother’s life.

but aerith really never got to spend time around people her own age, until zack. and she never really... got to understand herself, until she she could admit to herself she was different in ways that were sometimes painful, and ways she did not feel loveable. she kept secrets, she ignored the voices except when she was alone. and she never knew quite what to say to them---or what they wanted to hear.

[escapekissed]

Control There's so many ways to give in Eyes close Another way to make it to ten Oh, how to draw the line between wrath and mercy? Simmer, simmer, simmer, simmer, simmer down Wrap yourself in petals Wrap yourself in petals Wrap yourself in petals for armor Petals for armor

[escapekissed]

random modern au hcs ( aerith )

-aerith in modern aus is very into.... the 60s/70s. the aesthetic of hippies & disco but also. she just believes that. it was a time where the counterculture felt it had real momentum in making a change in the world, and she thinks that current mainstream activism feels very doomed and anxious in comparison. and she kind of sits herself in a retro-aesthetic & groovy mood in order to. better suit her own ideas of revolution and a grassroots approach to life.

-aerith has a twitter but she mostly uses it to tweet selfies&flowers&art with nondescript backgrounds and rt poetry, aesthetics & donation posts. she doesn’t interact with friends on it bc she doesn’t really like the social aspect of social media & she thinks that the cops r gonna use it to track her less than legal side hustles & sometimes violent protests. (and on that note, she uses a burner fliphone without a camera on it. she throws them away every so often and gets a new one. she only logs in to twitter thru her shitty old laptop that’s basically broken and forever plugged into the wall. if she wants to take pictures, she uses the polaroid her mom gave her for her birthday when she was eleven, and then scans them into the computer the old fashion way.)

-she can’t dance, at all. she kind of just jumps and bobs and waves sporadically completely out of time with the music. aerith’s best quality: her wiggles.

-aerith CAN fight in modern aus, and she does so well, and she’s very strong and practiced. but she’s never taken like. classes or anything, or done any sports besides softball. she fights like a viral video and not a jrpg protagonist lmao. she pulls hair and bites and she’ll whack you over the head with her staff