And another Tifa fic...
Title: After-Christmas Special
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Tifa, kind of Cloud
Prompt: 013: Yellow
Word Count: 1239
Rating: PG
Summary: How Tifa found herself at the Sector 7 train station that fateful day...
Author's Notes: This took a completely different direction that I had originally planned, but I am so happy with how it turned out. And I love the little cameo a certain someone makes, which completely took me by surprise.
Three days after Christmas. Tifa guessed she was lucky for the time off they got. Barret had made a few discoveries that, with Jessie’s technological mind, had quickly evolved into what would be their first attack on Shin-Ra.
She had been out that day in Sector 6 because of that mission. Though Avalanche was still fairly unknown in the slums, they had little hope of accessing the upper levels to gain information; however, the Wall Market was still frequented by Shin-Ra officials due to the seedy Honeybee Inn. Since Tifa was known to have the best bar in the slums, she had started making more and more visits to round up new customers, and this recruiting frequently resulted in Shin-Ra employees coming to the bar and growing increasingly open with classified data as they drank.
Maybe it was shady, and definitely deceitful, but Tifa always convinced herself that, as she was only deceiving the very people who had put Midgar in its current state, it was okay. Her deceit would give them the information they needed to change the fate of the slums.
Barret had given them Christmas day off, as well as the remainder of the Christmas week. It should have been four days, but Jessie was so full of ideas that she wanted to start working right away. The anxious discussions finally became too much for Tifa to handle, and guilty for not joining in, but still needing to get away, she decided to try for some advertising for the New Year.
She wasn’t very successful. It was too early in the day for the Honeybee crowd to have arrived, and most of the people on the streets were either parents buying post-Christmas groceries, or the occasional flower vendor. There were no after-Christmas sales in the slums.
After a couple hours of just people-watching, Tifa left. She’d noticed a new flower vendor, a girl about her own age, and it disturbed her. She was used to seeing young children and single mothers with their baskets, but this girl was her age. Tifa watched her walking--no, floating--from place to place with mingling of intrigue, nausea, and despair. This girl wasn’t weighed down by life the way most of the other vendors were. The way most people in the slums were. There was a very faint, but very distinct glow that she emitted, separating her from everyone else in the filthy Midgar underworld.
Somewhat disgusted, Tifa started back home.
This is why we’re fighting Shin-Ra. She thought. That girl-that could have just as easily been me. But instead, I was given the chance to fight. I’m fighting for her.
Hot tears welled in her eyes as she thought of all the lives ruined by Shin-Ra. As she approached the Sector 7 train station, she stopped and looked up at the plate looming over the dying soul of Midgar and shouted, “It’s all their fault! Everything! To hell with Shin-“
Her voice caught in her throat. Her sudden outburst had disturbed a couple standing near a lamppost, and when they moved she saw that they had been blocking someone laying on the ground.
All she saw was a crumpled body donning a blue uniform-she could see neither face nor hair, but she would recognize that uniform anywhere. It was somebody from Soldier. She’d spent years pouring over every newspaper she could find, looking for information on Soldier. She could still clearly remember the first time she ever saw one of them in person. She remembered every detail as though it were yesterday, remembered how she had fought back tears the entire time, when the young man who had appeared in her town was a stranger.
Visions of the day swam through her mind. She pictured Sephiroth, remembering how afraid of him she had been, but how happy she was to be around him anyway. Meeting Cloud’s idol made her feel closer to him, connected in some way.
She also recalled how much the black haired Soldier had reminded her of her lost friend. She smiled, thinking of the poor repair job that had been done on the cuff of the Soldier’s pants-he’d used a horrible neon yellow thread, which made Tifa think it was the type of repair Cloud might have done.
She wondered why this man was here in the slums. Despite her hatred for Shin-Ra, she could never feel any anger towards Soldier. Of course she knew anyone in Solider was at some point responsible for carrying out Shin-Ra’s dirty work; after-all, when Sephiroth had come to Nibelheim, it had only been because of the Mako reactor.
But to her, Solider would always mean Cloud, the boy from her childhood who haunted her dreams, and the one cause of her greatest regret. She hadn’t heard from him in seven years-she tried to convince herself that he was okay, that he was stuck on one of the outer continents, out of danger, and happy-but her heart told her otherwise. She feared the worst, and it was only years of trained optimism that prevented her from caving.
She loved him. It was a truth she hadn’t realized until it was too late, but it helped to keep her going. She knew she would see him again-she had to believe that she would, at least, because she had to tell him how she felt. It was why she had to convince herself that he was okay. She had lost everything from her childhood except for the small hope that Cloud was still alive, and it terrified her to think that she might have lost him too, because she’d been too selfish as a child to realize how much she needed him.
Cloud had willingly joined Soldier. Tifa knew that. But it didn’t stop her from feeling like it was just one more thing Shin-Ra had taken away from her. However, where the flower girl had evoked anger and disgust, seeing this Soldier brought on quiet despair, the reminder that despite her outward cheerfulness, there were moments where Tifa felt she would never be happy, never be complete, again.
“You promised…”
She blinked, and watched a tear splash onto the cracked stone floor of the station.
Through blurry vision she saw one of the station guards walk past the young man and mutter something under his breath. Tifa took a few steps closer. Shin-Ra or not, she felt the need to help the man in the Soldier uniform. But she stopped as she got closer-something had caught her eye, something that made her draw in her breath, made her heart stop mid-beat, as a gripping anxiety overtook her. Frozen, she stared at the familiar hem on the Soldier’s pants-a neon yellow scar across the blue knit. And as she stared, the man shifted, revealing, to Tifa’s absolute shock, not the black hair she expected, but messy blond spikes.
For the first few seconds she stood motionless, unable to even breathe for fear that what she saw was a hallucination that might vanish with the slightest movement.
Then, not bothering to fight them back, tears cascaded down her face, blinding her as she rushed to the lamppost, and she collapsed onto her childhood friend, the man who had once stolen her heart without even realizing it. And as his cloudy mask of despair dawned into glowing recognition, she realized that she had also stolen his.