PSL; [FLOWER, STARDUST, STEEL EXPLOSION]

[supersoldier]

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[supersoldier]

You can—

[Request the change aloud. Almost anything is in its database, he means to say. The programming would recognize the request and alter its surroundings to match; he had rifled through the options one day, on a whim — the environments ranged from anywhere on the planet, to places far more fantastical and alien, like drummed up from someone’s dreams. He cannot imagine why SOLDIERs would wish to train in areas so unfamiliarly jarring, but maybe keeping focus despite the distractions was the overall point.

But this intent, too, is derailed, like so much in a short time. His hands are placed on her waist, forcing him to face her directly again, and the rare hitch in his words is unavoidable. They stumble out, free from their usual careful filter.]

—talk to it. [Comes the far less explanatory remark, and where his palms press against her, they suddenly feel now too warm. Does she really want to be boosted up by him like they were still children? Somehow, the feels far removed from nostalgia, something that has the squared line of his shoulders tightening even more. Fingertips press gently against her, testing.]

...You can tell the room where you want to be.

[Comes the second try, a little better than the first.

He stands there, just a second short of it being hesitation, before Sephiroth commits to what she wants: he’s hoisting her up, his strength a strange mixture of undeniably strong and consciously careful, and does his best to place her on the chocobo’s saddle, eyes everywhere but her face.]

[cetral]

Really?

[ a response for the sake of a response. no real meaning to it. there's probably more meaning to discern from the way she can't stop looking at sephiroth's face, staring at his eyes or at the pinched line of his mouth, searching for something that aerith's not sure was ever there, or simply will ever return.

but that's before the hitch of her breath, as the floor falls away from under her.

she can feel the force it takes, the raw effort of lifting her, and no, she has no idea what she's expecting, just that, maybe, she wanted to see if he could. it's nothing like when they were just two kids running around the facility, when she'd insist and he would sigh before interlacing his fingers into a stirrup, and boosting her up a wall so they could go exploring together, getting into trouble for it. the way she'd felt the hunch of sephiroth's shoulder muscles as she'd settled onto her chocobo; the feeling of his finger pressure lingering on both sides for seconds after he lets go of her -- all of it makes her mouth go dry, her head swimming dizzily after the fact. she's still staring at him wide-eyed even when he doesn't seem to want to even look at her, and for some inexplicable reason, aerith finds that she's disappointed.

but her chocobo, animal and not patient machine, kwehs and jostles her out of her train of thought, and she sputters inelegantly, face a little flushed as she reorients herself on the saddle, holding the reins. ]

Flowers—

[ she commands without knowing anything, the slightest idea about how talking to it might make the program come to life. ]

Just . . . give me flowers–!

[ but to her credit, it works.

the hologram shudders and glitters and pieces itself to life, bit by bit. what happens then must be a day in high spring, the beginning of some faint humidity and endless sunlight, a one-hundred year old oak tree, and a gurgling mountain spring.

a long stretch of an open field, and wild flowers, daisies and white clover speckling the grass, as abundant as the clouds that weave lazily through the vast sky above their heads.

and aerith, who's definitely if not furtively looking at him, breathes out a faint, but audible - ]

. . . wow.

[supersoldier]

[As soon as he releases her, Sephiroth feels strangely overburdened with awareness. The quiet removal of his touch is slow, purposefully retracted; the inhale of breath steady and voluntary, else it sounds like it hitches; even how he considers her atop the chocobo feels more clinical than it should, in the way a person overcompensates for something vacillating beneath the surface. Like Aerith’s nearness has upended his foundations in the palm of her hands, a gentle upheaval that makes his nerves radiate.

It’s odd; paradoxical. Almost-anxious but not unpleasant, he doesn’t know what to do with it. So it’s a swift blessing that the world soon turns into carpeted flowers and an impossible stretch of cornflower sky, a beautiful distraction coming alive at her request.

He’s never seen anything like it — even though he knows it isn’t real, that it’s all light pieced mathematically together to imitate reality, there is no SOLDIER training that would dictate the environment transition into a field of blossoms, sunlight, an oaken tree that would never grow in Midgar soil, and therefore it’s all shockingly strange and new. It steals what words still remained on his tongue, and his hand finds idle purchase on Aerith’s chocobo, fingers carding through yellow feathers.

The birds seem to like it well enough, warking with excitement. Sephiroth cranes his head up to squint against the artificial sunlight, watching white tufts of clouds stride overhead— a parody of a military march.]

You’ve picked something out of a storybook.

[It’s hardly a complaint, light as the observation is, as though saying it to himself. And maybe it’s telling, that a young boy raised in a steel structure would see untouched, unyielding nature as fantastical.]