I'm glad you enjoyed the read. Yes, Aerith must have spent time under Hojo's 'care' because the game shows her old enough to stand on her own two feet when her mother escaped and died in front of her. The game never really makes any kind of deal of it at all though. In fact, the game really glosses over the trauma of being experimented on for both Aerith, Red, AND Cloud. Weird and one of the 'oh, we've got too much going on already - let's ignore the PTSD issue' that FFVII does so well - lol. That must be what fanfiction is for! They knew they had to leave us something to explore on our own ;)