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Irreplaceable Memories

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Word Count: 1012

Rating: Gen

Pairing: Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough, Aerith Gainsborough & Tifa Lockhart

Summary: Having left Kalm, the party set up camp in the fields where, upon Tifa's prompting, Aerith reminisces about the person who gave her the pink ribbon.

Notes: written for @zerith-week 2024 Day 2: Irreplaceable Memories

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

“Who was he?” Tifa asked as she settled down next to Aerith. “The man who gave you your ribbon.”

Aerith stared, dumbfounded.

“Ah, sorry, I overheard your conversation with that stall owner in Kalm,” Tifa hastily added. She bobbed her head in contrite as Aerith recalled the woman—middle-aged and wearing a plain brown smock—who had called her over to her stall to peruse her wares. It had been an innocent remark, Aerith had to admit. Something about how pretty her hair was and that a new ribbon was just what it needed. The woman hadn’t quite spoken it, but Aerith had taken it to mean that her current ribbon was worn and old. She might have been a bit curt with her response, now that she thought about it.

Aerith tugged at her ribbon and it quickly came loose.

“Does it look worn?” she asked instead.

Tifa cocked her head to the side then shifted her gaze to the fabric on Aerith’s hand. “Did she say that?”

Aerith shook her head. “Not really, but she said I needed a new ribbon, so I kind of wonder…”

She kept it clean, of course—washed it every other day—but now that she held it out toward the fire light, she couldn’t help but think that the pink had indeed lost its luster, and how the fabric felt thin and brittle in her fingers. Six years, was it, since the day Zack bought the ribbon for her? Not a day went by when Aerith didn’t don it on her hair.

“I got it from someone,” she said at last, then added, “A special someone.”

“Your boyfriend?”

Aerith smiled wryly at the word. “Kind of. He… left five years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“We didn’t break up or anything like that, just—” Her eyes flitted upward, scanning their surroundings. The only other presence in their small camp was Red XIII, who was dozing quietly on the other side of the fire. Once she was sure Cloud and Barret weren’t returning any time soon, she dropped her voice once more and said, “He left on a mission and never returned.”

Tifa’s eyes grew wide as the implication dawned on her.

Aerith spread the ribbon between her hands, pulling it rather taut as she attempted to see the campfire through it. It really had gotten thin. All those washes she’d done, the sunlight it soaked. Elmyra had tried talking her into getting another ribbon—had even bought her one for her birthday—but Aerith had only let it air in the open, or use it to decorate her flower basket.

They’d never talked about Zack in the years he had been missing. Or perhaps, Aerith had never let her. Countless times she’d seen concern lining her foster mother’s aging face, and countless times Aerith had chosen not to see. Because if she saw—if she acknowledged the gaping maw in her heart—the tides of pain and grief that would crash over her would be unbearable. She’d felt it when her mother passed; she didn’t want to feel it again.

“It would be a stretch to say that I saved him, but that was what he claimed,” Aerith said with an attempt at being lighthearted, but the thought of saying goodbye to this ribbon—to this first gift she had received from someone she would call her first friend—was like a lead in her mind that she couldn’t keep the sorrow from her voice. She cleared her throat, and tried once more. “He offered me one date, but I told him that was silly.” She giggled, managed it, and smiled. “So when I led him to where he could reach the upper plate, we came across a stall with all the pretty accessories you could find in the slums. They had a collection of ribbons there, and he bought me the pink one.”

Aerith had thought she had tucked all these memories away in a safe corner where nothing, not even her, could disturb them. But once the words rolled off her tongue, the doors to her mind burst wide open, and all she had hidden rose in perfect clarity.

The grit rolled beneath her soles as heat reflected off steel plates and even more steel constructions. They’d run around the marketplace trying to catch the boy who had stolen Zack’s wallet. He’d needed medicine for a sister, and Zack had dealt with it with a style that Aerith had initially found cute and later learned that that was simply how he was. She hadn’t thought he would let the kid use his money, that’s for sure—whether or not he had the money to begin with. The thought made her chuckle. Tifa looked at her inquiringly.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…”

‘To pay you back for the “hell-llooo”... I’ll buy you something. A memento, for today.’

A familiar feeling tugged at her heart, threatening to unravel her. Aerith’s breath shuddered and her grip on her ribbon loosened.

Seeing her apparent disquiet, Tifa reached over and held her hand. She smiled when Aerith looked at her. “So what if it’s worn and old?” she said. “It’s important to you and you don’t want to let it go. Isn’t that right?” Tifa quietly took the ribbon and moved behind Aerith, whose hair had come undone and was spilling down her back in soft tawny waves. Her fingers were soft yet firm as she combed through Aerith’s strands, expertly braiding her hair back as though she’d done it a million times before. Tifa tied the ribbon back into its place, giving it a firm tug then a pat once she did so, then grinned at Aerith. “How’s that?”

Aerith blinked, and in her mind’s eye, she saw Zack looking rather unsure after probably his first time tying a ribbon to a sixteen-year-old girl’s hair.

‘Does it look right?’ she’d asked.

‘Uh, I think so… Yeah, it looks great!’

But it wasn’t Zack’s resplendent smile beaming at her.

The corners of Tifa’s eyes softened. “We all have things we don’t want to let go. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

~ END ~

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