#aerya

Avalanche

So this is my most important and somewhat canon AU (as in a different timeline that possibly appeared in the remakes). Here, Aya meets and falls in love with Claudia, and is there with her during the Nibelheim Incident, but instead of escaping with her, she witnesses her canon demise.

After barely escaping, she never gets back to work, like in the canon, but instead of leaving Midgar with Claudia, she falls into deep depression. Yori is there for Aya and makes her move in with her, so she could keep a better eye on her love interest. Eventually, Aya realizes that she hasn't stopped having feelings for her friend and they end up starting a relationship.

Aside from Yori, Jessie is there for her as well and, after their father falls into a coma, the sisters learn about planetology and join Avalanche together, both with the intention of sticking it to Shinra. Escaping inaction helps Aya further collect herself after Claudia’s death, though it provides some interesting dynamics between her and Yori, to say the least. They still love each other a lot and Yori supports her actions, but as they get more severe, Yori grows gradually disillusioned with Avalanche’s methods. After the bombings of Mako Reactors, they also have to live separately for the safety of them both. After joining Avalanche, just like Jessie gets to learn a lot of skills useful in their operations, Aya gets back to crossbow and works on her agility. By 0007 her role in Avalanche ended up being recon before the operations and stealth fire support.

In 0007, Aya is surprised to see Cloud - her late partner’s son who, as it turns out, doesn’t remember them ever meeting (just like in the canon). She is very suspicious of his behavior and his appearance being very similar to his mom’s makes her feel uneasy with him around. Thanks to Jessie, who is familiar with her story, she grows rather compassionate for Cloud, has a few small duo operations with him (even meets him at Honeybee Inn, trying to save Tifa herself) and maybe even hints at them meeting earlier.

Avalanche!Aya is more reserved than her canon counterpart and tends to be a bit dry in her interactions with others, even though she deeply cares for her own. Compared to Jessie, she feels no guilt for the deaths they’re causing and sees them as necessary to achieve their goals.

While it's tempting to either save or kill off both sisters during the moment of Jessie's canon death, making Aya for the first time express guilt for her actions at her sister's side, Aya actually witnesses Jessie's death along with Tifa and Cloud, not making it in time to save her. While Tifa tries to comfort her, she asks her and Cloud to leave her with Jessie's body while they go help Barret.

Internally, Jessie's death makes her go absolutely rogue, causing her to disappear with neither Tifa nor Yori being able to get ahold of her. She only appears during the party's conversation with Rufus on the rooftop of Shinra HQ, surprising them with her appearance by putting an arrow in the new CEO's head, causing a huge canon divergence, with possibly disastrous consequences.

Ayori Good Ending

Timeline where Aya gets in a relationship with Yori before even meeting Claudia. They’ve been flirty with each other in the canon anyway, so it was only a matter of time before they would end up dating each other.

After one of Reno’s parties, Aya ends up sleeping at Yori’s place. Drunk, they both have a small after-party along with a heart-to-heart, as they sometimes used to do after a night out. This time though, one thing leads to another and they end up in bed, finally revealing their feelings for each other. The next morning, they both initially feel a bit guilty for getting intimate while drunk and are worried that their potential partner might not share their feelings after all, but it quickly turns out that they have nothing to worry about. That Sunday, Aya only gets back to her apartment to get some clothes and other necessities before going back to Yori.

Aya ends up moving in with Yori, who tries to do everything in her power to make Aya feel better, eventually, being a well-paid Turk, having her girlfriend quit her job at Shinra and start looking for something she would actually enjoy doing for a living. Aya also gets encouraged to pick up her crossbow training again. Aya doesn’t join Avalanche and tries to discourage Jessie from doing so, to no avail. Similarly, she survives the collapse and has to deal with her sister’s death.

Everyone Lives

A world where everything happens like in the canon, but Aerith and Jessie survive. Giving me (and Aya) more time with them and allowing scenarios that would otherwise be impossible.

When defending Sector 7’s plate, Jessie’s leg got seriously injured, making her unable to climb the support column or fight further. After she’s found by Cloud, Tifa and Aerith, the flower girl takes it upon herself to escort her to her house, along with Marlene. Jessie is slowing them down even further, being the main reason for Aerith getting caught. After meeting Cloud, Barret and Tifa after the collapse, feeling guilty for her actions and Aerith getting caught, on top of mourning her parents, at Tifa’s suggestion, she ends up travelling to Aya where she could recover and grieve with her sister.

After Cloud visits Aquana, Aya still decides to go with him, worried about him, but also willing to avenge her family and follow in Jessie’s footsteps (who now has to go through rehabilitation before she could fully recover).

In the Forgotten Capital, everything happens the same way it does in the canon, but Aerith’s injury causes her to fall into a coma, with little chances of ever waking up. At first, the party leaves her in Cosmo Canyon, but after the events of the game she’s moved to Aquana where Aya, Claudia and Jessie can take care of her. Eventually, she wakes up, but also requires a long time of recovery.

In this AU, I also use ships that are canon in my eyes. Aerith and Tifa are together ever since Costa Del Sol and they love each other very much, while Cloud ends up in a relationship with Jessie after spending an extended amount of time with her post-FF7. The relationship is obviously encouraged by Claudia, who already learned that Jessie is into Cloud when he and Aya were out saving the world. Well, I don’t canonically ship Cloud and Jessie, since I usually see Cloud as aro/ace while Jessie is, well, dead… but I think they’re cute together and they deserve a shot at being happy in a relationship. Jessie gaining a lot of depth in Aya’s canon story is something that helped me make the decision, as her crush on Cloud now seems somehow more believable, with Cloud being more likely to reciprocate her feelings.

Also it’s the AU in which Aya gets pregnant and Iris is born, while Cloud might finally come out as a trans woman <3 The action takes place in Aquana, thanks to both Aerith and Jessie choosing to stay there, making Cloud and Tifa choose the same.

Oh and I don’t know what to do with Zack to make the events of the game still happen yet, sorry. But I kinda want him to compete with Jessie for Cloud’s attention.

Younger Cloud

Aya meets Claudia the same way she does in the canon, but it happens ten years earlier in the story, with Cloud being six years old and Claudia being twenty-three. Aya remains twenty-five when she meets them, which means that this time she’s the older one in the relationship, while Claudia still is the more mature one. Aya has a lot to learn when it comes to being a mom, but she quickly befriends Cloud and moves in with them, quitting her job at Shinra. Three years later, when Tifa’s accident happens, she plays a crucial role in defending Cloud, making him feel loved and less alone. Similarly, Claudia finds a lot of support in her during that time. Eventually the new family might end up moving somewhere else.

Anyway, in this AU, the three of them get to live out a very peaceful life, far from all the drama. Cloud never tries to get into SOLDIER, the Nibelheim Incident might or might not happen depending on the circumstances, as well as Meteorfall, but these are too distant to even think about <3

I actually wrote an extensive post about this AU here!

Ever Crisis Academy

This timeline is inspired by the EC academy event. Here, Aya graduates and starts working part time as a private tutor. That’s how she eventually meets Cloud, who she gives lessons to. Over time, she befriends and falls in love with his single badass mom. They soon start dating and get married much quicker than in the canon. Of course, over that time Aya tries to befriend Cloud as well, but probably ends up as more of an (admittedly young) mother figure to him. Tifa thinks she’s hot.

Here's a post focusing on this AU's version of Claudia!

Vampire Claya

In this AU, Aya meets Claudia just like in the canon, but the older woman seems to have yet another reason for her loneliness - being stuck in the vampiric unlife. Their first evening together plays out the same as in the canon, but there was a bit more malice behind Claudia’s words. The next morning, after their first time together, Aya wakes up pale, with a set of iconic bitemarks. At first, she’s terrified and rightfully feels betrayed by Claudia. The older woman feels bad about her actions and apologizes to her, as if it changes anything, but soon makes her realize that they both found solace in each other’s presence and Aya gets convinced to stay with her, starting their codependent relationship.

Whether Aya goes back to Midgar for some time or not, I haven’t decided yet, but she’s there with Claudia during the Nibelheim Incident, weirding out Cloud and, a week later, slaughtering Sephiroth when he tries to kill them. As to what’s in store for them after that, I don’t know yet! What I know is that Aya is happy to leave her old life behind and spend the rest of eternity at Claudia’s side.

At the very least, during the Nibelheim Incident, the women save Tifa from her near-death state by cursing her with vampirism. I'm also thinking about making Cloud share Tifa's fate somehow. Whatever I end up choosing, there's a potential for very interesting dynamics, especially with Cloud being the only "normal" one of the four of them.

The AU is partially inspired by my “toxic claya” jokes to my partner, putting the beginnings of their relationship in a much darker light.

Cyber Aya

Also known as SOLDIER!Claudia AU, where Claudia, instead of getting pregnant with Cloud, ends up leaving Nibelheim in 1988 to become a P0 SOLDIER operative. Upon witnessing Shinra’s war crimes in Rhadore Archipelago, and later in Wutai, she grows disillusioned with Shinra, and ends up deserting and getting an APB put out on her.

Since her work as a SOLDIER was exceptional, her genes were used to create her ‘son’ - a mako enhanced clone of her made in efforts to create the perfect soldier.

At the same time, behind Shinra’s closed doors, Aya was being turned into a cyberhuman weapon after being gifted to the project by her parents. She endured a lot of experiments and enhancements that broke her both physically and mentally. The experiment was largely successful, aside from her being deemed a threat to herself, the scientists around her, as well as Shinra as a whole, only to be let out when everything else fails. She’s being held in confinement and for a long time has been someone not to be interacted with aside from monthly checks on her vitals and combat skills. Her personality is largely shattered, leaving a highly unstable, depressed, pain-loving, blood-thirsty shell of something that was once an innocent person.

After Claudia starts making moves towards getting her son back, gathering some of her old friends from SOLDIER (Lucia, Genesis, Crimson etc.), President Shinra slowly starts recognizing the danger she is to his company herself and in an act of desperation lets Aya out, with a group of hounds under her command. Among them is Yori, who obviously starts feeling for her and even falls in love with her. While Aya was trained to complete her tasks regardless of the circumstances and had her hatred for Claudia instilled in herself by her superiors, she also hates Shinra. Soon, along with her hound squad, she expectedly goes rogue and starts killing Shinra troops as well.

During the pursuit she has a lot of encounters with Claudia, where she always ends up losing. Over time losing and being off the leash she further destabilizes, and her hatred for everything, including Claudia, grows further. During their last encounter, before her death, Aya seems to have seen the canon reality where she lives a happy life with Claudia as her wife, on multiple occasions hinting at what she saw and, in her dying breaths, even reciting her marital vow to Claudia, out of pure spite for her target, just to mess with her even after death. After her body is left in the hands of weeping Yori, Claudia breaks down into tears, not really understanding why.

More info here.

AerYa / TiYa / AerTiYa

Just an AU where Aya never meets Claudia before her death in Nibelheim, but somehow ends up being a part of FF7 party. This AU is used for future scenarios where she’s in a relationship with Tifa, Aerith or both of them. I think they would be cute together. Most of the time I like thinking about them as a polyamorous relationship.

Currently I'm working on the start of their relationship!

Final Club

A joke AU inspired by Fight Club that came to existence after a series of jokes between me and my partner.

Long story short, Aya gets with Claudia, but fails to save her in Nibelheim. Traumatized, she represses the memory of her late partner and the incident, erasing the last few months of her life. Soon, she gets in a relationship with Yori. As she continues working at Shinra, she gets gradually more disgruntled with the company, but thankfully soon meets a thirty-three years old punk single mom introducing herself as Claudia, who wants to deal as much damage to Shinra as possible, because the company “took her son away from her”. They befriend each other, and result in Aya quitting her job and starting to help Claudia in achieving her goal. Enamored by Claudia’s looks and charisma, Aya spends more and more time with her, while Yori gets gradually more weirded out by her girlfriend’s new mom persona as the time goes on.

Later, Aya would probably end up taking over Avalanche, turning it into something much worse, and dropping the Sector 7 herself, accidentally killing her loyal sister and parents in the process. Yeah…