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sephirthoughts · 4 months ago

Note

I wish you would write a fic where...

too embarrassed to ask so i went anon you mentioned you like tseng x aerith as a ship would you possibly be down to write a little something for them? 🫣

Hello lovely anonnie! i adore any excuse to write about ships that i like but never get around to writing, so you're the real hero. thank you for the ask and the excuse for self-indulgence!! 🖤

tags: tseng, aerith, tseng/aerith, elmyra gainsborough, ms. folia, cute, short, unresolved pining, inconvenient interruption trope

rating: general audiences

warnings: aerith-typical violence, very very minor blood

note: yes i gave tseng a first name don't @ me i have no time for cowards

think sephiroth with masamune is scary? wait till you see my girl with a folding chair

“Tseng!” Aerith exclaimed, dropping the folding chair, with a resounding clatter. “You scared the shit out of me! What are you doing sneaking up on people, like that!”

Tseng pushed himself up to a seated position, on the dirty floor, gingerly touching the large bump that was already forming, on the side of his head. “I apologize for startling you. I’ve certainly learned my lesson.”

“I’m so sorry,” Aerith winced, as she held out her hands to help him up. “I really didn’t know it was you. I just heard a noise and, to be honest, I’ve been pretty high-strung, all day.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Mm, nothing I can put my finger on. It’s like…the energy in the air is all tensed up, or something.”

Tseng stopped dusting off his trousers and frowned. “That doesn’t sound like anything good.”

“Never is, these days. Oh—your head is bleeding. It looks pretty bad. You better come back to my house. I’ll clean it up and heal it for you.”

“No, thank you. I doubt your mother would appreciate my intrusion, at this hour.”

“She’s not there. She went over to the Leaf House to work on the layout for the new garden. They’re pulling an all-nighter.”

“Even more reason for me not to go. You shouldn’t be alone in your house, with a man.”

“What is this, the 50s?” Aerith laughed. “You think I’m gonna ruin my reputation and never be able to get a husband?”

“Of course not,” Tseng said patiently. “I only meant that it isn’t safe for you to be by yourself with a man, in that isolated house.”

Aerith rolled her eyes. “So, now you think I’m stupid? I wouldn’t just invite some man to my house. It’s ok, because it’s you.”

“I see. I…wasn’t aware we’d become so familiar.”

“We’ve seen each other at least twice a week for fifteen years, Tseng. How much more familiar do you want to get, before you let me treat your bleeding head injury?”

“An injury you inflicted. With a folding chair.”

By way of reply, she raised her eyebrows and pointed at the door.

Aerith had a specific mood in which she simply would not be contradicted, and so the stone-faced, professional killer found himself obediently following a little pink-clad girl, out of the church and up the dirt road, toward the town center.

He attracted many glares, as they passed people on the narrow streets of the bustling little slum, but that was the worst of it. Everyone knew the long-haired Turk was a friend of Aerith’s, and no one was eager to incur her wrath.

The atmosphere had been stuffy and stale, as usual, on the walk back from the church, but the evening air was crisp and refreshing, in the hidden grotto where her little fairy-cottage lay, surrounded by lush and gorgeous greenery, that could be found literally nowhere else, within a several-miles radius of Midgar.

Inside the small, tidy house, that Tseng knew as well as his own, Aerith commanded him to sit, at the dining table, then went off to do something in the kitchen. He heard rummaging and water running. He felt a tickle on his cheek and brushed at it, thinking it was a stray hair, but his gloved fingertips came away wet and sticky.

It was only then that he realized the blood had run down his face, and dripped onto his white shirt. His head was throbbing pretty badly, too. Just how hard did she hit him? He was more inclined to be impressed, than anything.

“Don’t touch!” Aerith scolded, as she came back bearing a tray, loaded with clean towels and a steaming kettle. She poured the water into a ceramic bowl, into which she dipped one of the towels. “Sorry about your shirt. I could try to get the stain out, but I don’t have anything for you to wear, in the mean time.”

“That’s not necessary. You’ve—tss!” he hissed, as she pressed down on the wound, with the towel.

“Too hard?” she said, pulling it away.

“Hot. It’s too hot. You have to let the boiling water cool for a minute, before you slosh it all over someone.”

“Oops. Sorry, I’ve never done this before. I always hear people say to boil water and get clean towels, when someone’s hurt, so that’s what I did.”

“I think you’re thinking of childbirth.”

“Am I? Oh, you’re right. That’s funny. Why would I confuse the two?”

She grabbed his chin to turn his head to the side, before she applied the wet towel again, and he employed himself in looking studiously at anything but her. Because while she was dabbing at his head, chatting away like they were old friends, she was also leaning extremely close, and her gauzy sundress wasn’t exactly cut conservatively, at the neckline. Her knee kept bumping into his thigh, too, which was profoundly distracting.

“Alright, that’s as clean as I can get it, before we get the bleeding stopped,” she announced, after a several long minutes of what seemed to be needlessly assiduous labor. “I’m gonna cast a healing spell, but I’ve never used it, so. You know. No guarantees on how well it’ll work.”

“I’m sure it’ll be—wait, you’ve never used it?”

“Nope. It just sort of…came to me, today. I haven’t had a chance to test it out, yet.” She smiled sunnily. “I guess that makes you my guinea pig.”

Tseng balked. “Maybe we should just use one you already know works.”

“Maybe if we were cowards. We are pioneers, Tseng! Now, sit still. This might sting a little.”

For a second or two, he felt nothing. Then there was a swell of intense, golden light, and his head felt like she’d pressed a branding iron to it. He gave a start and pulled away, but it was already over.

“Wow, did you see the light?” Aerith breathed. “I’ve never had one do that before. Your wound healed so fast, too. I didn’t even have time to blink and it was just gone. It’s all healed, already!”

“It is?”

“Mm-hm. Go ahead. Feel.”

He reached up and gingerly prodded the area with his fingertips. Sure enough, the swollen, throbbing lump on the side of his head had vanished. Not only that, there was no pain at all. Not even the lingering tenderness and tingling, which he regularly experienced in wounds that had been treated with cure materia.

He gave a stiff nod. “Impressive. Your skills are developing.”

“Maybe not,” she said, laying a hand on her brow. “I think…I think I’m gonna—”

Mid sentence, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, like a puppet with cut strings.

Tseng caught her and cradled her in one arm, patting her face and shaking her gently. “Aerith? Aerith, are you alright?”

“Mm…” she murmured faintly.

He leaned closer. “What was that?”

“Mmmm…my hero!” Aerith burst out, with a peal of laughter. “What a knight in shining armor! A big, strong man, taking such tender care of a fainting damsel. You caught me and everything! If I’d dragged it out a little longer, would you have princess-carried me?”

Tseng let her go and stepped away, pursing his lips. “I’m glad you’ve amused yourself. I didn’t find that funny, at all.”

“What, because you can’t deliver damaged goods to Shinra?”

“Because I care what happens to you, Aerith!” he said, with sudden heat. “If I thought you’d harmed yourself, helping me, I would be very displeased.”

Aerith’s green eyes went as wide as saucers. “You care about me?”

“Of course I do.”

“But care about me, how?” He wouldn’t look at her, so she leaned around, into his eyeline. “You mean, as a valuable research subject, that your bosses would be furious about you losing…right?”

Tseng gave a cold laugh. “I dislike that you think that about me, but I suppose it was inevitable, given the nature of my employment. Whether you believe me or not, is immaterial. I have never seen you as a subject, or a target. Not ever.”

“Oh, really? If you don’t see me that way, then why are you always trying to make me go back to Shinra?”

He narrowed his dark-brown eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, or not. If not, then it can only be willful blindness.”

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. “Stop insulting me through the side-door, and just say it, outright.”

The tall, black haired and black-suited man stepped closer, looming over her, suddenly appearing very different, to how he normally seemed. Sharp and dangerous. Like an unsheathed blade. “I have the power to destroy nations, with a snap of my fingers, Aerith. Do you truly believe that if I ever intended to deliver you to Shinra, you would still be free?”

Her lower lip trembled and she faltered back a step. “I never thought about it. I guess, I…I never thought of you as such a scary person.”

“No—I wasn’t trying to scare you,” he said, with a sigh of frustration. “I only wanted you to understand me. To know where I stand. After all this time, you should…know.”

“You mean, you stand…between me and Shinra.” A tear escaped her emerald eye and slid down her cheek. “I see, now. You’ve been protecting me from them, all along. But why? Why would you do that for me? Why would you spend fifteen years watching over me and holding them off, at your own risk?”

Tseng turned away. “Everyone has their reasons. Let’s leave it at that. It’s getting late. I should go.”

Aerith caught him by the sleeve of his jacket, stopping him in his tracks. “But…what if you didn’t?”

“If I didn’t?” he asked, glancing down at her white fingertips, just pinching the edge of the black cuff.

“You should stay,” she blurted out, then blushed and lowered her eyes bashfully. “I mean…I want you to stay.”

He let himself be tugged back, away from the door and escape. Toward her. As if he could have resisted. It was like the pull of gravity; gentle, ceaseless, inescapable. Unconsciously, his hand turned over, to cradle the one grasping his sleeve. Ever so lightly, so that she could easily have pretended not to notice, and drawn away. She didn’t. She let go of the sleeve and let her hand rest in his. Her palm on his palm and her tiny wrist between his fore and middle fingers.

Her head was tilted down, and her eyes were still fixed on the floor. He could feel her trembling, as if she were afraid. But he had never seen her afraid of anything, in her life. So, was it fear, or something else?

“Tseng…” she murmured.

“Jiang.”

“What?”

“Tseng is my surname. My given name is Jiang. Since we’ve become so familiar.”

“Jiang,” she repeated slowly, rolling the unfamiliar word around on her tongue. “It feels strange, calling you a different name, after all this time. But it suits you. What does it mean?”

“It means descendant of the god of water, but the meaning has no special significance, in relation to me. My mother chose it because she liked how it sounded. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Aerith smiled. “Mine means something between earth and flower, because the Cetra spelling included both word elements, but there’s no special significance in relation to me, either. My mother probably chose it for the same reason your mother chose yours.”

“She chose well.”

“I guess they both did.”

Her hand was still resting in his hand. All this time they had been edging imperceptibly closer together, till they reached the event horizon. All it needed now, was for one of them to poke a hole in the window paper. Then there would be no going back to the way things were.

“Zack,” he said.

Aerith stiffened perceptibly. “Um. What about Zack?”

“Zack was…my friend,” he explained, haltingly. “I promised him I’d take care of you.”

She lowered her eyes, then looked up at him again. “Then you should take care of me.”

His other hand slipped around her slender waist. Her body felt impossibly fragile and delicate, compared to his (particularly for a girl who had whacked him over the head with a folding chair, not an hour ago). She leaned into him and he bent down.

The sound of footsteps and voices, on the walk outside pushed them hastily apart, again. A moment or two later, the door opened, and Elmyra entered, with one of the women from the village. Aerith was at the table, gathering up the towels and teapot, and Tseng was standing a professional distance away, with his arms crossed.

“Mr. Tseng,” Elmyra frowned, looking back and forth between her daughter and the Turk. “What’s going on, Aerith? What is he doing here?”

“Hello, mother. Ms. Folia,” Aerith said breezily. “Nothing to worry about. He had a little injury and I treated it for him. What about you? I thought you were going to be at Leaf House all night.”

Elmyra’s gaze flickered down to the blood on Tseng’s shirt, then back up to his face, before she turned to Aerith. “Well, I forgot my notebook, with everyone’s ideas from the last meeting, so we came to pick it up. How exactly did Mr. Tseng get injured?”

Aerith looked sheepish. “Well, he—”

“I wasn’t paying attention, and I hit my head on a stray piece of furniture. Aerith was kind enough to tend to it. Thank you, for your hospitality. I’ll be going.” Without waiting for a reply, he gave a clipped bow and departed, quickly vanishing into the night, outside.

“Good goddess,” Ms. Folia remarked, after he’d gone. “I’ve heard people mention the long-haired guy in the suit, but he is something else. I’ve never even seen a man that good-looking, before.”

Elmyra glanced toward the door, the way he’d gone, then back at Aerith, who was carrying the tray into the kitchen. She had a lot of reasons to hold that Turk in deep distrust, and be wary of his presence, but this specific one had never even occurred to her.

Not that she thought of her daughter as some kind of vestal virgin (she was well aware of the extent of her intimate relationship with Zack), it was only that she hadn’t considered the man who had spent all this time circling overhead, like a hawk above a rabbit’s den, might be a different kind of threat, altogether.

“Aerith, if those Turks hurt themselves while they’re poking around and spying, it’s their own problem. I don’t think it’s a good idea to invite them into the house, too often.”

“Huh?” Aerith said, looking perplexed, as she came back from the kitchen. “But we invite them in, all the time. You and Rude have tea together, every Wednesday. Or…oh. You mean Tseng, specifically. I understand why you’d worry, but the thing is, I kind of had to help him. He was lying about how he got hurt.”

“Oh, goddess, what did you do?”

“Well. He startled me, at the church, and I may have…hit him over the head with a folding chair.”

Ms. Folia burst out laughing, and Elmyra couldn’t suppress a little chuckle, even as she shook her head disapprovingly.

“You know what? Nevermind,” she said, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “You can clearly take care of yourself. Here’s that notebook, Ms. Folia. We’d better get back, before they send a search party.”

“Bye, have a good time!” Aerith called after them, waving cheerfully, as they went away down the walk.

When the two ladies were out of sight, she shut the door and leaned on it, letting out a deep breath, as if she’d been holding it in. Absently rubbing her palm, where it had rested in Tseng’s hand, she gazed into the middle-distance, with a troubled expression clouding her brow.