Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy: Crisis Core or any other Final Fantasy games for that matter.

A/N: I had the brilliant revelation that Aerith starts with A and Zack starts with Z and thus their names encompass the entire alphabet when put together, so I decided to write this. It will have one prompt for every letter of the alphabet… and will mostly be full of fluff.

A is for Airplanes

"Zack," said Aerith, leaning over the man who was lying on the floor of the dilapidated church. He opened one sky-blue eye and grinned.

"Yeah?" he asked, sitting up and giving her his full attention. Aerith readjusted her position, now facing Zack instead of her flowers.

"Do you ever have to ride on airplanes when you go on missions?" Aerith asked. Zack chuckled under his breath as he watched the wide eyes of the beautiful girl across him. She was as curious as ever, always asking as many questions as he could answer. Now he knew what Angeal felt like. Aerith wanted to know anything and everything about the world above, even though, as she always said, she was too afraid to venture there.

"Yes, I do," Zack said, "helicopters too."

Aerith bit her lip, looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. "They sound really scary. How does something that big… fly?"

Zack shrugged. "I got nothin'. You'd have to ask Hojo or some other scientist with textbooks for brains," he replied. "It doesn't really matter how they fly, it just matters that they can."

Aerith looked like she was thinking, still puzzling over the giant metal vehicles and how exactly they managed to cross the sky with the ease of songbirds. Zack could practically see the gears turning in her brain. Aerith was remarkably inventive and intelligent, but without much of a formal education (not that he'd really gotten one either in the hick down he'd come from; heck, he'd been more interested in girls than school anyway) there were some phenomena that she simply could not understand. She attributed these to magic or miracles, and Zack knew it. He sometimes teased her about it, but deep down he knew that he had no better answer.

That did not stop Zack from teasing her as much as possible, though. While Aerith was still thinking about airplanes, Zack leaned in close and bumped his nose against her, startling her into attention. He would never get used to the way her eyes brightened and always flicked to his whenever she noticed him looking at her. "Maybe it's magic," he whispered.

Aerith rolled her eyes and pushed him off. "Maybe," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and returning to her flowers.

Zack smiled as he watched her work. If there was one thing he knew for certain it was that Aerith had more magic in her than any airplane.