It hadn’t taken much to win her trust.

Aerith scolded you the first time you wandered into the flowerbed she’d been tending. “Stop! Don’t step on the flowers.” She looked at you like you’d done the unthinkable. “Why are you looking at me like that? Most people walk around the flowers, not through them.”

Your apology hadn’t been enough. She made you pay for it—not in gil, but in sweat and sore knees, changing soil and pulling weeds under her watch. When you finished, she clapped her hands, a bit of dirt dusting your shoulder. “Wow! Don’t they look beautiful?” And when you stood up to leave, thinking your penance was complete, she caught your sleeve. “And where do you think you’re going?” she asked, pushing a watering can into your hands. “You’re not nearly done yet. There’s more we have to do in the church.”

After that, you were always there. Every morning, like clockwork, she’d wave goodbye to her mother with both arms and run to you like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Ready?” she’d ask, already tugging you along with the cutest grin. “I want to stop by the store first.”

You were her safe place—the one person she looked for before anything else. And it would be so, so easy to destroy that.

She didn’t know. How could she? Aerith, the special half-Ancient girl who had never seen anything beyond the steel sky of Midgar’s slums, who was so trusting that she didn’t ask what you did for a living since you’d been so good to her. She couldn’t have known it was all premeditated, that you were meant to meet that day. She couldn’t have seen you and understood that you chose to trample over her flowers. That every awkward smile, every glance, every carefully measured word was part of a plan—to win her trust. You needed her to lean on you like a friend so that, when the time came, you could hand her over to Shinra without a fight.

“So what if they tease you? Screw them,” she huffed, determined to make you buy matching ribbons with her. She thought that ‘they’ referred to your friends, not Professor Hojo, whose men were waiting for you inside the church you were headed to next. “I say it looks great on you. You can even wear it however you like.”

Aerith excitedly snatched a ribbon from your hand once you’d reluctantly paid for them, then took your wrist and gently tied it for you. “See? Like this.” She looked up once it was secure, her green eyes meeting yours. The silence between you felt almost suffocating, and a faint blush bloomed across her cheeks—the same rosy hue as your ribbons. “…what?” she murmured, refusing to break eye contact. She couldn’t lose to you, but she worried you might notice the dark circles under her eyes from staying up all night, thinking about today. “Don’t tell me you’re falling in love with me already.”