Don't own FFVII. Thanks for reading.

Her father on dark, windless nights, when the trees still knocked branches over a barked joke, and leaves tumbled down in laughter, when grass tipped their feathered hats to her as she ran past them, and the stones whispered stories older than themselves in exchange for a kiss, on nights before her mother died, would often trick her to sleep with a fairytale. 'Once upon a time,' he would begin in his best serious storyteller tone, one that required him to puff out his chest and bristle his whiskers over every happily-ever-after kiss. But once she was tucked in with her sheets up to her elbows and her quilt up to her shoulders, which couched a worn yellow chocobo, his cracked and weathered boots would thump up the stairs and stop near the foot of her bed where he would sit after inquiring if she brushed her teeth. She nodded solemnly.

— Well, then, once upon a time—

— When's once?

— A long time ago.

— How long ago?

— Forever.

— But...

—But little girls who interrupt—

— What's innarup?

— It means little girls who aren't quiet when their papa is talking, won't get to hear the story, he said with a pat to her head.

— Sorry.

— Once upon a time, there was a princess—

— Was she a pretty princess?

— Yes. She had long brown hair and brown eyes that her mother thought looked like—

— Did she have a chocobo?

— I suppose, her father scratched his head, most princesses at this time did.

— Did she love her chocobo?

— Well, yes, she was a very nice princess and he was a very strong and brave chocobo and they had many adventures together.

— What was his name? Where'd they go?

— Tifa, he admonished sternly.

She peered askance at her cherished stuffed toy.

— Fluffy wants to know.

Her father sighed.

— Well, they went all over the world.

— Did they...

— I think Fluffy's getting tired. You both should get some sleep.

— No! He's awake! Promise. He wants to hear the rest of the story.

Her father smiled.

— Okay, but no more questions, and then it's bedtime.

— Uh-huh!

— Once upon the time, the princess...

How had the story gone? She didn't remember her father's version, too shrouded by cobwebs and ash, or the occasional scorched wail of long-lost lives, but she assumed it had a happily-ever-after for the princess, a grand ball or a dance under the stars, or true love's first kiss underneath a sky abloom with fireworks. Flowers probably spilled forth from seed to petal in that instant—wasn't that the way those stories always went? Flowers, daisies, he-loves-me, he-loves-her-not, petals, bouquets tossed over shoulders to a woman in the crowd with no one to call her hero.

Tifa wished she'd never found out.

As she stood amidst the bustle of the Station, staring blankly at portals that promised nothing but a good time, part of her she'd rather not acknowledge cursed the sky, the stars, the Gold Saucer, and every single couple in the park for ruining her lifelong delusions, though, truthfully, she knew she had no one to blame but herself. How could she have ever pretended she were a princess, much less believed herself to be worthy of a fairytale? Princesses slipped satin and lace gloves up their rosewater arms, cinching them at the fingers with jeweled rings and the delicate grip of a silk fan. They never yanked on blood-worn leather knobbed with enough materia to take out a quarter of the Gold Saucer and then some. Princesses tended flowers; they wouldn't dare touch the slum drunks, much less serve them up another round, no matter that most of those guys had no other place to go. Princesses had warriors to fight for them as they tittered faintheartedly from a beribboned pulpit. They never brained sleazy henchmen, run-amok monsters, and half-baked Turks on a regular basis.

She couldn't believe herself to be a princess, and she supposed Cloud couldn't either. She thought he might've once —a long time ago, at a well, in a town, under the stars—but now what did they have?—a journey and some half-forced deal for him to stay and blow up a few reactors. She couldn't even be sure they'd ever had anything, not when things didn't sync up the way they should've and he became another girl's bodyguard. A beautiful girl; a really nice, lovely, friendly girl. Perfect hair, perfect teeth. Perfect welcoming smile. How could Tifa hate that?

As it turned out, far too easily.

It wasn't an all-pervasive, all-consuming hate. She didn't even hate her most of the time. Or really hate her at all. Or if she harbored any sort of ill will, it was usually nothing more than a slight irritation, easily attributed to stress and exhaustion. When they trekked through the wilderness, worn and filthy and almost delirious with muscle fatigue and hunger, Tifa found it nice to listen to someone with a rosier outlook, someone who giggled and gossiped and listened as much as she shared. Someone who braided flowers in Tifa's hair while she teased the others; someone who winked at her over an inside joke, almost like they'd been friends forever and not rivals for the affections of the same guy.

Or maybe they weren't rivals, what did Tifa know? Cloud hadn't looked back when Aerith coaxed him out the hotel door for a date. He was as silent and unexpressive as usual, but he'd gone. Whatever competition that might've existed between the two women was settled, total knockout, match point, game over the moment he walked out that door. Meanwhile, Tifa had been doing something practical, like checking her materia against recurrent ninja thievery, or counting her potions, or opening the door to go scrounge up something to eat just as the two lovebirds passed, one flitty and chattering constantly about this and that, the other reticent, but clearly moveable.

Tifa hadn't been able to stay in her room then, pining and waiting for him to return. She told herself it had nothing to do with Aerith's almost certain penchant for gossip tonight.

Instead, she abandoned her room for a wild night on the town, to seek distraction in the crowds and in the lives of others; but perhaps the sudden shock of returning to civilization—a redhead pranced by in a skimpy two piece with a train of feathers stuck to her backside—blindsided her, and she veered away from the Station towards the more traditional, less gaudy, and hopefully less crowded parts of the park.

There were none. And as Tifa scanned the list of possible options, even the stop nearest to the hotel made it seem like she'd gone too far.

As soon as she landed at the race track, she ran straight into a gilded chocobo and stumbled backwards. Its hollowed eyes fluttered delicately on ball hinges from the impact, but they never focused or showed any recognition; instead their movement shimmered and settled like a mirage, reminding her of a flaxen-haired porcelain doll that she'd received as a child. Her eighth birthday, the first without her mother, had been an extravagant affair, with a woven flower basket at every table in the living room, courtesy of the mercantile and his plump apple-cheeked wife. Vanilla cake with strawberry icing in delicate rosettes lured in the kids still carousing along the outskirts of town. From the lupine-hedged duplex, a relatively new-fangled idea in a town the size of Nibelheim, had come Johnny with his gap teeth and nervous laugh, and Susie, who had candy-striped ribbons weaved into her hair and gifts of lollipops in each hand. And there were Tommy, Max, Peter, and Mason—whom, admittedly, she had a little trouble distinguishing when it came to who brought what, and which one lisped through a loose tooth, and which boy inevitably left his backpack wide open and trailed gil, dirt, candy, and lethal toy trucks across the kitchen floor. Two people hadn't shown. Her mother's presence hung like a shroud over the ceremony, which for the first time lacked the rich, spiritual voice that had always whisked above the boom of her father's atonal baritone and the kids' jubilant screams as wispy candles melted both wax and years onto the tablecloth.

And then there'd been the boy with blue eyes and wild hair who peeked through the window, while her father dropped a present into her lap—that blonde, blue-eyed doll, the one that sat on a dustless shelf during school hours and slept cradled in spindle arms during long, dreamless nights—aimed to distract her and divert her questions. As she'd grown older and her memories of home faded, she grew less sure that bluebell doll looked the way she remembered. Perhaps she'd subconsciously substituted one for the other: he rarely talked to her as a child and the doll could only speak in her imagination, and Tifa had wondered if it would be nice to tell things to someone fragile and precious and alive, someone who would her keep safe and never let her go.

But when had she let go—the fire? the night at the well? Or was it rather that she had never bothered to hold on, except to comb the newspapers for nominal proof of a promise?

Where was that proof now?

Certainly not here in glass chocobo eyes, bridles bitten in fierce locked jaws, and jeweled lights that fractured shards of color through the unsleeping night.

The Gold Saucer held nothing sacred like the invitation to a child's birthday party. Why had Cloud not been there? Why—and this she could only assume for her birthdays were the event of the year for everyone under ten—why had he not been invited?

Ultimately, it didn't matter. The point now—ironic, wasn't it?—was that she still hadn't invited him. Someone else had. And he had taken her arm as they stole out into a land of steel and glitter and gold razzmatazz—not that it wasn't fun. Oh, the games were challenging enough; the skill, speed, chance, and the rewards enticing enough, and perhaps they would've stolen her attention better than zoning out before the entrance to Chocobo Square, if only she could've concentrated.

One of the concerned workers came up to tap her shoulder, and she jumped, startled, though thankfully didn't flip the unsuspecting man on the back or knock him cold in the stomach. How well that would've gone, had she been thrown out of the park before they'd had a chance to find out more about Sephiroth and the Ancients. Handwaving away the man's concern, she mumbled a country girl's excuse that she'd never seen so many lights and quickly rushed through the door to escape questioning eyes, though unfortunately, she had no such luck. She ignored the persistent offers to escort her to a seat—or better yet—take real good care of her tonight, and wound through the crowd towards the sparse nosebleed section of the grandstand. A few men, mostly the diehard gamblers who had made a science of risking their money and thus had no use for the flash and booze of the casual better or Saucer playboy, eyed her clinically, their rolls of tickets and receipts skeined around one wrist while the other hand tabulated statistics and odds. Their motions stilled for a second as she passed, thankful that she'd bypassed them, though perhaps the more masculine parts of them bemoaned their fate. Tifa wasn't stupid. She knew boys liked her.

Some of her former patrons, if still alive and not pulverized and dusted, would've enjoyed the races, Tifa thought, analyzing the way the jockeys stood with legs wide to frame a trophy and a pile of magical trinkets. Their arms were spread even wider to clutch a bikini-clad woman...or seven, as if their pride was scotched with insecurity over the next race: if they couldn't lord over these girls when they won, then what would they have when they crashed or were hard-pressed into retirement? The image freed pieces of memory not joyfully recollected. A few newcomers to Seventh Heaven would swagger forward, beer in hand, and try to snatch a pinch or grope before she threw them out on their asses, as Barret put it. Barret had been the first to treat her like a daughter in Midgar, like a real person rather than a lump of meat. That was, before Cloud.

Tifa fidgeted against the cold metal of her seat. She wasn't sure if she wanted to think about this tonight, not when she was supposed to be having so much fun. But the question was there, and after what had happened earlier, she knew it could no longer be ignored.

How did Cloud treat her?

When she first found him, he'd been zonked out, eyes spasming back and forth behind the sheerest of films, and though she would never admit it, he'd frightened her. Even when those same eyelids flicked up and she spied a blue she had not seen since she was thirteen, the recognition of who they both were had come slowly. Sick, he had an excuse. She didn't, though she disguised it with gentle care and tender smiles.

With professional precision she invigilated over his every move, tabbing and crosschecking against hazy memories and dreams of the man she thought he'd be. She smothered protests and questions when things didn't jive, wavered between the what-is and the what-ifs, and pulled trump card after trump card to make sure he stayed within reach of her care.

Why had she done it? Out of genuine concern for him, or out of desperation for a living link to her past? The latter didn't fully appeal to her good sense as Johnny often haunted the bar and she felt no real need to press him to her heart and never let go. The gifts he occasionally scrimped and saved to buy for her, though flattering and appreciated, never made her both bloom and wilt the way Cloud's flower had. That gesture had stirred in Tifa a hope that he'd ask her out, but perhaps he had never intended to present the flower to anyone; perhaps it had been a spur of the moment thing, or he saw it and remembered home, or in some bizarre, unknowing, black-hearted moment of prescience, he had offered Tifa a symbol of the girl who would eventually steal his heart. All it would take was a single flower and a gil or two.

A shot fired, and Tifa's interest in the race hissed and deflated as rows of tethered birds jumped from the starting block and started their circling to nowhere. How many times a day did they race? Did they get anything for it, she wondered, or were they like people, always chasing after the elusive prize? Perhaps in her case, she thought, letting out an exasperated chuckle, she was a bit cuckoo herself for some spiky-headed Kupo Nut. Surely he had seen what had been so obvious to her and everyone else. Even Jessie, though she had asked, knew what Tifa had hidden behind self-denials and stuttering refusals. How could Cloud have not? Or had he simply not cared to see?

A deafening whoop exploded from the crowd below, and shifting her gaze from where it had settled on an old Shin-Ra advertisement plastered to the far stadium wall, Tifa saw a chocobo racing down the track, while its rider tumbled and somersaulted behind. Medics with cots jogged out to where the broken man lay, scooped him up, and dodged birds on the next loop with professional ease. Around the next wide curve, another chocobo—a radiant golden, most likely, though Tifa could've sworn in the harsh lighting its feathers glinted dark and malicious— stole the lead, racing towards the finish line with a triumphant wark and a proud driver, the bloody opponent long forgotten. Of course.

Tifa said a quick prayer for the fallen man through the buzz of speculation and instant replays and wondered who in their right mind would consider this a family-friendly event. Her mother would never have dreamed of taking Tifa to see random, even accidental, acts of violence. And as for all the couples overrunning the park, her view of romance was of a gentler, more old-fashioned time.

The Gold Saucer wasn't her idea of a perfect first date, though if given the chance, she might have changed her mind. When leading muscled soldiers up the mountain path to the reactor and pressing the more talkative ones for details about military life or news of a certain blond SOLDIER, Tifa had occasionally let her burgeoning hormones and her mother's tattered romance novels fuel fantasies about her first date, and her first kiss. She had dreamed of quiet smiles and emotive, blue-spangled eyes that spun like constellations through her heart and soul. The two of them would walk hand in hand along some secluded glen, winding down the western side of the mountain to settle in a field. Her head would rest gently on his shoulder, and he'd switch to hold her fingers with his other hand, so his arm could snake around her waist and pull her into the shelter of his chest. They'd talk and laugh, though not once had she ever imagined what they could possibly say, and when she smiled, those moonbeam eyes would lower and fix upon her lips, and then her own would blink up and down until all she saw was the sunset incandescing through her hazy thoughts, and endless, infinite, consummate blue.

Tifa sighed. The barking of a candy seller with wares on his back distracted her, and when he swiveled to the side, showing off his multicolored treats, her hand shot up, waving him over for a cotton candy. She hadn't had the sweet since the summer festivals in Nibelheim, and she thought it might lift her mood, remembering how she waited all year for the chance to eat it. But now, as soon as the first sugary sting bit her tongue, her stomach lurched, and she lobbed the confection into a nearby trash can, scolding herself that cotton candy was clearly meant only for children or dates and she was neither.

She had never gotten that date. Someone else had. Someone else had knocked on his door, tugging him through it, his hands barred on each side of the jamb (though perhaps only in her mind) like some tour de force against all lights, camera, action in favor of green hills, wooden wells, and starry nights. But reason had won out and trumped history, and science had rewritten and evolved the past, and there was a promise effaced from memory's ledger. Tifa had promised, and another girl swooped in for the spoils. The pecking order turned roundabout: shouldn't the prize go to the longest, most loyal friend? As if she really had a claim to that. Seven years had vanished, and with it all traces of the boy she'd imagined him to be so long ago.

Cloud seemed less burdened around Aerith, less like the stiff, defensive, unsure child he'd been and more carefree, even as a mercenary. He was both more open and more recluse, though that hardly made any sense. It was almost as if something burrowed deeper, something dark and frightened hid underneath his SOLDIER strength, though was that so bad if both the past and present held so much potential pain?

Tifa shifted a glance away from the track back to where her cotton candy lay caught in newspaper and empty beer cups, and was already attracting flies. Things certainly had changed.

The Cloud of Nibelheim had favored silence over dropped lines and innuendos. He'd lived a quiet life with his mother, despite all the scabs and bruises he equally dished out and received. Who had started those fights? The blood and still-bleeding wounds stood foremost in her memories, and the light fringe of black on blue around his eye sockets. But most of all Tifa remembered a promise, something they'd wished together upon a falling star, a brilliant blaze that sealed her to him, though perhaps it hadn't meant as much to them both. Cloud barely seemed to recall it until she had needled and coaxed it out of him like a child forced to confess a mistake, too embarrassed to admit that he was a hero to a lanky thirteen-year-old girl. And now that starry-eyed girl's gaze had clouded, and he didn't even see her, not when she melted into the background of a burned Nibelheim and a capsized plate. Pink was a much more vibrant, healthy, joyful color—even the Gold Saucer knew that much with pennants and bunting like pastel rainbows and a confetti of lights, lights, lights in green, pink, yellow, and blue strung from bronze lampposts.

Even most of the useless date prizes hooked to a stick around a candy-striped awning, boasted glitter and garish colors, or beckoned softly with calm pastels. Black stuffed chocobos seemed less lucky than the other breeds, as she had yet to see one, though vendors held up oodles in other shades. Moogles, too, though normally white, wore a splash of color.

Perhaps Aerith with all her light and carefree smiles and gentle pink sway relaxed him, let him forget the nightmares that had been, and with them, a small dark-haired girl. Aerith begged protection, she required a hero. She would've picked out the cutest chocobo and recruited Cloud to ride it, all for a single kiss. Tifa imagined that had she herself raced, she would've foregone help and swung her own leg high over a fierce-looking chocobo's back and stomped towards the starting line. Since they'd started this journey, how many times had Tifa fussed over being coddled and sheltered like a weakling? Wasn't it Tifa herself who insisted on being strong, optimistic, and always alone?

Before her the race wound down to the final stretch. The other riders were closing in, though the dark golden bird still held the lead, but Tifa didn't stay for the outcome. She forsook the happy pastels of Chocobo Square and made a random left, not caring where she was headed, but hopefully to somewhere more suited for a girl like her. As she hurled feet first through the tunnel, the eerie image of that riderless chocobo haunted her, while the arena's tin notes trickled hollow and somber through the dead of the night. Golden feathers, silver reins, backlit obsidian eyes that stared hopelessly into time, limbs contorted into an eternal mockery of flight—waves and whirlpools that went nowhere. In her mind the eyes flickered into rubies or sapphires. She strained to tell what color they were in the ever-changing palette of the Gold Saucer. She looked at her hand: green and sickly, then blinked and looked again at a palm flushing red in the strobing lights. In a few months, according to Barret, this place would be done for and bits and pieces sold to collectors and junkers. No mako energy meant no power meant no creepy, crawly haunted houses, and no tricolor stage lamps highlighting the sequin-scaled dragon on various posters taped up around the park. They looked more like a toy for Marlene than a fearsome enemy for whatever princess that was. The play was obvious no Loveless, a work so admired and esteemed that parts had been required reading even in a school as small as Nibelheim's. She considered going, but knew that she wouldn't find a place for her in that play. The Evil Dragon King probably wouldn't even try to threaten the fair princess. She would get the hero at what cost?—a momentary discomfort (maybe she thought the dragon smelled, or was appalled that the beast didn't have cute furry friends or pearly pink ribbons on its tail or a date on a Saturday night).

Meanwhile the bitter homeless village girl had nothing.

When had she changed? Or was she only fooling herself that she had, that her desire to take down Shin-Ra wasn't just to save the planet and spare other villages from the same fate, but to make them bleed like she had?

And now she had done it; there was more than monster blood in the leather print of her gloves. What would the princess and her Fluffy say if they could see her now? Maybe they'd scream and call her a monster, before running away to sunnier dales, or maybe they'd kiss her booboos and try to make them all better—though a peck to a skinned knee had never been documented as healing a broken heart. When had she lost that innocence? When she knew the world could crash and burn? When she knew the people she loved wouldn't be there forever?

Or had she even loved him? He had been a periphery figure.

She paused in her musings when the tube spit her out and she found what she was looking for; and she shuddered.

The battle arena, poised like a medieval den of sin and death, was draped in blacks, grays, indigos and reds. Skeletons foretold unspeakable trials, while column after column stacked names and obituaries of the defeated—both promising the crowds tidal waves of blood and gore. Human and inhuman tongues were cut and rotted, and fires cackled over the more modern touches: screens and levers, and random generators designed to unleash the most hell upon a foolish challenger. Hardened warriors smeared the blacks and reds of carnage across their cheeks and down their persons with each kill. There were no fluted trophies here. There were only prizes in colors like that dealt victory in tandem with death and destruction. Like ashes from fire, burns from reactors, or scars from swords.

Tifa tugged self-consciously at the hem of her shirt, though she wondered if it was to protect her modesty or hide the bruising proof of all the things she'd done since that first time she'd chosen to fight back. It certainly didn't look good for her whose brightest color belonged to her gloves, now stained with blood, the same spectacle that seeped through the cracks on the stone-cold walls.

In a door just beyond her viewing she could hear the distinctive snarl of a Marlboro, smell its sulfuric breath smoking around them, and she knew the man waiting in the battle ring armed with a harpoon and a gun had no chance of beating all eight rounds. He might get past the creature if he could avoid being stung with a confusion spell; he certainly had enough muscles to deal a lethal blow, but how long would he last, she wondered, as his own strength grew depleted and magic wore thin against enemies that had been starved and mistreated for weeks, not to mention that were generally hostile to humans? Without skill and battle training, without survival smarts or a team behind him, she doubted it would take longer than three or four rounds. Besides as his confidence swayed, the jeers and taunts would filter over the roars and chalkboard squeals, and he might begin to believe he deserved the death the crowd demanded.

The first round started with a bang, and the man was surprisingly agile, ducking and spinning and undercutting with style, but Tifa chose not to stay long around the people guzzling giant tubs of liquor and soda and passing wads of gil over a severed claw or a masticated arm, or something so chewed up and spit out that no one knew who or what it had been but god rest its soul anyway. All she knew was that it wasn't anyone in her party—it wasn't Cloud—and she'd already seen too much for this to be fantastic or entertaining.

As if death ever could be.

Or maybe that wasn't completely true. Once, she had dreamed of death. When she was still a broken girl who sobbed silently at night over lost homes and dead fathers and a teacher who thought a complete stranger would be a better caretaker than the man who saved her, the part of her that had dreamed of moonlit dates and heroic journeys to the end of her imagination, convulsed into apoplectic shock and shrunk under the cancerous overgrowth of smog and hate. At first she refused to train. She could barely walk, though she refused to admit it, and her muscles atrophied while the mental acuity she once cultivated was now used only to keep her mind blank and off the pain. Back in the low field behind the school where she'd practiced in Nibelheim, the act of throwing a few punches through the air or spinning high kicks into low had always granted her a moment of transcendental release, a hairsbreadth where there was no thought, only being and breathing. But how could she move like that in Midgar, when her fists always met the face of another, and a high kick impaled her on a sword that stung straight through her ribcage? After her Nibelheim practices, Zangan had led her through some stretches, before gently sitting on the ground and folding one leg over the other. His breath would steady and deepen, his eyes close, and for a long moment he wouldn't move. When they got up after their supposed joint meditation, he would walk her home and tell her of the ancient warriors, his father and the fathers before that, in tales riddled with obscure morals and hidden pearls. Some he explained to her, others he refused to reveal. The one she remembered best was that a true warrior never carried anything but himself into a fight: you could not take old wounds to new battles. She only remembered this because the day after he refused to carry his own student—his own protégé—with him, it was the one maxim she deliberately broke. If he refused to be burdened by his past, or hers, then no matter what he claimed, she wouldn't live for his legacy. A goodbye letter or a comatose girl: his reasons didn't matter, he'd left them both behind for someone else to find.

For months she tormented herself with memories and a lack of purpose, and perhaps, with no family, no home, and no reason to fight, she would've died an urchin's death in the slums. But Barret had given her a roof over her head and a family and finally a reason to fight. Shin-Ra was to blame. Shin-Ra would pay. We's gonna make all dem Shin-Ra dogs bleed, he'd said, and she'd believed him. And so, one day, she walked to an abandoned lot in another sector and planted her fist straight into a board, shattering it into a thousand pieces, which were joined by thousands more as she kept at it. Feet flailing, lungs stinging, muscles both eager and exhausted, she decimated piece after piece of the rubble until she collapsed to her knees, though—and this was so unlike the man now crumpled on the battle room floor—with her first smile in months. She would fight Shin-Ra, she'd decided right then and there, though at times her faith wavered. On one particularly bad day, when despair asphyxiated her in smoke and left her grasping for someone to save her, when she refused to look at anything upon awakening, Marlene had climbed onto her lap and asked her to read a story. Of course she'd wanted a story about a hero. Somehow Tifa told one about brave men and women who came together against a terrible giant and saved the world. She even managed to end it with a hero's kiss and 'They lived happily ever after.' Then Marlene asked for another. Tifa told her about Fluffy and the Princess, while Marlene bounced on her knees (to Tifa's discomfort), enamored and full of questions.

After that it became a habit to spin a yarn or two before bedtime each night.

Even tonight, while Tifa told herself tales of sin and death, the thought of two eager girls and a story made Tifa want to smile.

The habit had grown as more people started coming to the bar. She had started small, serving primarily food and a few specialty drinks until she realized that ninety percent of her income was coming from men on the down-and-out who only wanted to drown in liquor and look at a pretty girl. At a barely functioning used bookstore, she found a few old recipe books and one thick book on bartending and bought them all. At night she and Marlene would pour over them: Tifa would memorize recipes and tricks of the trade, while Marlene conjured stories about the (clean, wholesome) names, and who might drink them or what they wanted. With Marlene, Tifa retained the optimism of her childhood, and together they'd dreamed of fairytales with happy endings and coconut breezes.

But now as she stood on the great stone stairway leading back to the Station tunnels, as she heard the ringleader sweep away liabilities for good press and self-promotion, and pump up the crowd for the Terror of Junon as he faces eight terrifying forays into the pit of Hell! (a cheer), she figured she had probably done the same with her own stories.

For Tifa never forgot that girls couldn't always sit in towers and wait for heroes, that there were evil warriors with glowing green eyes at the top of every mountain and sharp rocks in every valley; and so there were also untold stories rewritten about warriors, even a SOLDIER, 1st Class—mind you, 1st Class!

Tifa hadn't realized until tonight how much she'd believed in her own tall tales about heroes and happy endings, and not the vituperative dying words she spat to a man simply doing his job. A man who gave his last breaths, if the stolen Shin-Ra reports and Zangan's letter were to be believed, in Nibelheim.

In a way, she had traded him places, left the dying child to bleed quietly while she, in the on-loan beginnings of adulthood, slid on gloves and strapped on armor. She fought first to bring down the very company that had torn down her home and built up that SOLDIER, pushed him through the ranks and into combat with a madman. She fought doubly on his account (what was his name again? Zack?), or maybe even for triplicate revenge of a promise. With each leathered jab or twist-turn-uppercut-spin-sweep, her once baby-soft skin melded with those SOLDIER defenses and seared strength into the memory she held of a small boy. Offense took precedence, and she was her own hero that beat and bled with two hearts. Or with one that carried the blond-haired, blue-eyed phantasm of the other.

Then when Cloud had returned from the dead, figuratively, and joined AVALANCHE, she let him take the reins, carrying both their heroics and both their hearts while she tended bars and egos. Strength shared, she'd tapped old reserves to carry older dreams, fairy tales and chocobo kisses, until the day they were to fight together and he found he could no longer hold on tooth and claw. She pleaded with him that she had so much to tell him, that she couldn't go back to bearing both their past lives and her dreams alone, not when he'd been so atomically present and vitally real.

But he fell.

And came back a new man, with a new woman on his arm, and Tifa pretended that she was a new woman too. A flirt. A slut. A devil in a blue dress.

He took his life elsewhere, into forced laughs and unfamiliar habits, into seven years' worth of memories in which Tifa played no part, and handed them to a girl who sometimes tapped a finger on her chin and mused, 'It's so like him.' And all Tifa could think was, 'No, it's not.'

Perhaps it was then—now— smack dab in the stench of gore while monsters roared, crowds jostled her for a closer look, and two people were probably k-i-s-s-i-n-g under the bleachers—that she was finally forced to realize that even the happy memories—even the fairytales—slowed you down in a battle and disoriented you. Perhaps it was now with a date in progress and all illusions and delusions melted away, that she was finally, fully able to forgive. Three times: a teacher for leaving her, a SOLDIER for coming too late, and Cloud, her hero, for not coming at all, for missing something he'd had no obligation to keep.

...But who had agreed when she had asked him to stay a second time to be her hero and save something of what was.

And it'd been then that she first knew that she was falling for him.

With him she'd never considered fights to the death, waivers and bets signed with equal disregard, not when Cloud gave her a different reason to fight. A fight to keep something like a promise as pure as she remembered it. To revel in the safety and protection that she had once felt when she could skip from her house to the other side of town without worrying about being mugged or raped or attacked by a monster. A fight to believe in the possibility of love over the actuality of physical attraction. A fight that wasn't a fight at all: it was a being, a remembering of who they both were under the armor and pain, something vulnerable and human.

Even if that something vulnerable and human made no sense and got things all wrong. She didn't understand why she remembered things differently, but she couldn't bear to shatter their connection when they were both trying to cling to something sort of beautiful, some sort of glorious redemption. Hers came through the hopes of yesteryear, even those dreams that occurred in shattered towns and atop rickety wells that burned; Cloud's came through military heroics, even those missions that ended in cover-ups and burned-up artifacts sealed in boxes marked 'Classified.' Both needing to be strong, and both desperate to keep their vulnerabilities near and locked up inside the heart of the one person who knew them.

And now Cloud could pretend, or maybe he could finally be who he always wanted to be. Strong. Invincible. A bodyguard, a hero.

And Tifa would finally be forced to fight alone. On transcontinental quests that ended well, or poorly. On dates. In unfair fights between men and beasts, in which only beasts, human or not, walked away alive.

Despite her training, she wondered how many rounds she'd have lasted in the Battle Arena with her weaknesses so exposed, her back open and her heart bleeding on the floor. Would the crowd cheer when she sank to one knee and panted for air while her vital signs flatlined and stalled to a dead stop?

Probably.

Would she be given a warrior's death for blowing up a few reactors that took lives indiscriminately; or the death of someone fighting the wrong cause: the death one gave to dogs crazed and one-sighted for taking a bite of something they shouldn't have, for a scratch at a tree comprised of legs and knees, while the tree was chanting itself calm with something silly like petaled promises? A dog shot and burned with violent tremulous howls or singsong whispers of 'He loves me, he loves me not.'

She honestly couldn't say. She only knew she had to get away from the Battle Square. Anything, anything, anything was better than that fate.

Briefly she considered heading to Speed Square for a quick game of aim and fire, or Wonder Square to whack a few moogles, but that violence couldn't be any better, especially when, she imagined, her first two hits wrecked the machine and she was asked politely by two armed men in satin vests to enjoy please some of the other festivities, everything's free tonight!, and they shoved into her hand a ticket to a play, to which they also escorted her, though they had the good sense not to touch her or grab her arm.

Everywhere posters proclaimed a night of entertainment and high adventure, and as her imagined escorts bowed and simpered their way to safety, Tifa considered the portal before her. Maybe that was exactly what she needed. She had spent far too much time wallowing in her own thoughts, and though justifiable, it wasn't healthy nor like her to begrudge someone else happiness, not when so many lives had already been squashed. She steeled her shoulders, flashed a smile to no one in particular (though it probably seemed to the stragglers trickling in that she'd just won big over...she saw no words, only blood, and shuddered), and forced herself to walk into the auditorium midway through the play.

Something about the whole production let her latch onto cynicism instead of collapsing in desperation. The stage was framed by two bloated moogles and surrounded by a picture-book pastoral scene of a happy sun and a country cottage, never mind that judging from his attire, the actor on stage intended to portray a wealthy king. Where his castle was, Tifa couldn't say, nor could she explain why the richest place outside of Midgar proper couldn't afford to create believable scenery for the same play that showed night after night.

Or even devise a halfway convincing storyline. Was it rude to ask for a little more, something that could keep her attention? The Evil Dragon King Valvados, other than the customary kidnapping, which surely Princess Rose had grown used to by now, didn't bother harming the fair maiden, and the actress playing her seemed too giggly to be believed. Losing a home and everything that one cherished was no laughing matter. The hero too wasn't fraught with guilt or insecurity over his noble task. He didn't really seem to give a damn.

Plopping down in a mid-aisle seat, Tifa wondered if Cloud had taken Aerith to the Event Square, if they had watched this very same production. It certainly seemed like the stuff of a perfect date...if she squinted and closed her ears, though perhaps they wouldn't have noticed the puerile plot and idiotic acting if they were too busy staring into each other's eyes and Cloud was grunting sweet nothings and Aerith was teasing him and translating his nonexistent words into pure poetry.

And suddenly Tifa felt sick. When the Legendary Hero Alfred dared to peck the fair princess on the lips and the wizened old king pontificated upon Happy Endings and Wuv, Twoo Wuv, Tifa excused herself, rocketing over shoes and kneecaps to the nearest exit and ran into the tunnel that resurrected her (or a really bad joke) into Ghost Square.

A few of the night workers lingering on the headstones began to stare at her with leering, enterprising eyes. Their calls to cheer up, pretty lady, head to Wonder Square and try your luck at a round of skeeball or Super Dunk, or have a nice safe turn at the Wonder Catcher, you'll catch a big one forsure, punctuated with a sloppy wink and a move those kinds of guys normally did when they saw a pretty girl, didn't help. Didn't they know that graveyards weren't for picking up a girl, and girls played those games with their boyfriends, but she was alone—and then Tifa stopped. This was ridiculous. It was just a date, she berated herself. Nothing more, nothing less.

So why then was the past crashing down about her? Why was her first night of rest in forever sent spiraling into the hated and the macabre until her chest clenched and unhealed scars burned?

Why was she seeing pink and haloes of golden yellow at every turn through the crushing darkness? Why, even in the gondola cart chugging up over her head she thought she saw—

And then she recognized the tinkling laughter and the glitter of familiar bracelets as they pointed out the window at the ghastly hotel.

He'd taken her on the gondola and Tifa found herself forgetting to breathe. Cloud had taken Aerith on the gondola, and it was probably the most perfect date in the history of legendary perfect dates if Aerith had anything to do with it, and...

No, it didn't matter. She was strong, optimistic Tifa Lockhart. She didn't mope over spiky-headed morons.

Except he wasn't, not at all, and if she were honest with herself, neither was she.

It was simply that the little girl who had loved her stuffed animals never dreamed that happy endings could hold this much pain. Fluffy and the Princess were heroes of paradise, not probable underdogs in a fight to save the world and the lives of people who cared nothing about her heartache. Could they begin to imagine that the groundsman over there, the one still winking and tapping his belt, knew what really was at stake? Did he have any interests beyond a good time? Did Cloud and Aerith, for that matter, or Fluffy and the Princess? Did Tifa?

The fate of the world rested in blood-stained gloves, her own and those of her friends, and the justice she thirsted for was so near and so tempting, and so against everything her mother had taught her to believe about the virtues of forgiveness.

If her mother could see her now, what would she think?

She'd probably cry, Tifa decided, more frightened of her daughter than of the fake wails of the hotel. The building moldered under Tifa's gaze; turrets contorted, gables trembled with the effort to stand still, and with each moment they rotted the last vestiges of her romantic delusions. Part of her wished the entire place would sink into one of those open graves and go toppling into rubble. It wasn't fair that someplace so golden and outwardly perfect had been built upon the sweat and blood of old Corel. It wasn't fair that lives had been rebuilt and children played with toy SOLDIERs in sandboxes filled with the ashes and silt of old Nibelheim. It wasn't fair that innocent dreams were crushed and promises forgotten, and the number of people Marlene had seen die was higher than she could count. And it wasn't fair that Cloud rarely allowed himself to smile.

If Aerith gave him that luxury, could Tifa really wish that away? The jealous part of her argued that Aerith was in love with a phantom. Aerith looked beyond Cloud; she saw something in the bravado and the corny one-liners, whereas Tifa thought she saw through them, something lurking behind the ominous green rimming his eyes, the green that seemed to be a relatively new addition but promised power and swift pain to those who crossed him. It was the mark of a Shin-Ra SOLDIER.

And Tifa wondered if she could accept that, too.

If this new Cloud was all there was to him, and was all for another girl, would she still love him?

Tifa remembered how it had started for her, after she realized that she was falling for him. The way her skin shuddered and thrilled whenever he brushed nearby, the air stirred and eddied from his presence in ways that felt like the rush of breeze during the spring thaw: comfortable and exhilarating, familiar and new. Tensing, jumping, freefalling, flying, her heart could've contained the world, swollen and free with knowing and assurance. Back in the bar she found herself desperate to do things for him, little things that would make him smile and share in her newfound freedom. But these reactions were documented in biology, anatomy, or at best, psychology. Could that really classify as love any more than what Aerith—giggling, smiling, fluttering, fawning Aerith—felt?

If Cloud never loved her back, if Tifa never got her chance, would she still feel the same, or would she creak and groan and rot like this hotel, embodying so much of the past that no one dared visit her except out of obligation, forsaken and forsaking all that she'd been and all she'd ever cared about?

Did she have a choice?

She rounded an open grave and sank onto the headstone. Her head tipped back and as she stared at the simulated midnight, she thought she heard a loud sizzle, then a pop, before a trail of smoke whooshed overhead and exploded into a fire of a thousand colors.

There were reds and blues, yellows, greens, and even pinks, and they whizzed through the air at the speed of sound to form patterns like stars in the sky. The light exploded to reveal the wheels and gears of a nightmare hotel, to a place where the shrieks couldn't be heard over their deafening boom. When the individual sparks faded, another light burst before her sight, and the world whirled and twirled in never-ending technicolor glory. They reminded her of candles, the novelty sparkler variety she had insisted upon for her big fifth birthday, and the unused ones her mother had saved in a cabinet in the kitchen for nights when the thunder threatened just outside a little girl's window and the lightning slashed across the sky to leave only shadows in its wake. Even when Tifa had worried that she was too old to be scared or that the bigger kids might poke fun, her mother had brought them in anyway and they'd both sat cross-legged on the floor, drawing shapes and writing their names in lights until Tifa could no longer keep her eyes open. Even the tiniest spark back then had lit up the pitch black room, and Tifa realized that she had mostly forgotten the storms, instead remembering the flash of her mother's smile. Her glowing presence hadn't depended upon beautiful clear skies or a full night's rest in order to bring comfort to a frightened child. And it certainly hadn't depended on the song sung or the perfect pitch; her happiness had been found in bringing harmony to things that couldn't find peace, and bringing hope to someone whose focus on the storms had turned shadows into nightmares.

And Tifa wondered if perhaps this, these lights—not Sephiroth, not the keystone to the Ancients, not a date or fairytale or even Cloud's heart—were what she'd been looking for this whole time.

This dance of light and dark dared to claim that not all things that sparked—be it flame or budding romance—were bad, not all fire burned and destroyed, not all the night needed to be feared, and not all love needed to be shared. Perhaps the key to their life, and life in general, was doing something so completely and so vividly that it didn't matter how much the world's darkness tried to smother you, you'd still be there. And in a strange way, she realized love wasn't about the fairytale ending. It wasn't an ending at all. It was a living. It was in the rebuilding of lives, in people who saw family beyond blood ties, in children who hung crayon pictures on the refrigerator. It was even in friendships and dates with the wrong girl.

Perhaps in the end, it boiled down to a choice.

When the pyrotechnics display finally ended, Tifa stared long and hard at the shadows before her, before looking up to the Saucer lights. Over the death and destruction and utter falsehood of the Ghost Square, the various saucers hovered like the golden tree of a empyrean forest, or mushrooms upon which magical sprites twirled and danced. It was the stuff of early childhood. Somewhere overhead, two people she cared about were without her, but they were happy. On this quest through darkness, they'd found a moment of reprieve in each other, and as she watched the lights twinkle like a thousand shooting stars, Tifa supposed she too didn't need anyone else to make her heart shine, any more than she needed a promise to have a hero. She felt her heart swell with a new promise, one made to herself, for herself. She would make her choice. After chasing death for so long, she would now hold onto the light, even if she had to hold it for another or it belonged to someone else. She would cherish that boy, that same broken boy who watched her carefully when she climbed up a well's rickety wooden rungs. She would hold onto the warrior who stayed for a promise, who remembered it though he didn't seem to recall much else. She would protect the quiet man who sat by himself by the campfire, whose silent orders ensured they all checked their packs, who traded potions for weapons so he could shoulder the heavier supplies on his back, who rolled his eyes when Barret was in a mood or Yuffie prattled on and on and on about what-ev-err, who held out his hand to pull Aerith over a particularly high obstacle, and who let down his guard and trusted Tifa to tell him that things were all right and it was okay to go after hope and happiness.

If he found the light of his life in Aerith, then Tifa wouldn't stand in his way; she wouldn't risk that gleam in his eyes, whether blue or green, ever being dimmed. She wouldn't give up now and be an if-only and forsake everything that her mother and father...and Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie had wanted for the world. She wouldn't allow Nibelheim, real or fabricated, to burn a second time, or let a madman kill everything she loved. She would keep the light sheltered and safe and do whatever it took to make sure those she loved found the peace they deserved. `

It was with that light in mind that she readied and flexed her legs, jumping into the tunnel that led straight to the culmination of a good date. If she could do this, if she could rise above everything that had happened, soar above her own past and all the regrets her day had held, then tomorrow wouldn't matter. Tonight would be her last night to pretend. Tomorrow she'd grow up, and she'd kick some monster's ass and smile her faith-filled, faithful smile and not even look the other way when she caught someone else's secret longing or shifting eyes coordinating a rendezvous on a grassy knoll. And when this was all over, if they were still alive, she'd attend the wedding and the only tears would be glad ones. As long as they were happy together.

As long as Cloud was happy.

Cracking the door to the wooden cabin, the operator welcomed her kindly in his cigarette-roughened voice, and Tifa thought it might've been the first genuine greeting she'd heard in a long time. It wasn't fake or flowery—it promised nothing—but it held purpose and simply was what it was. "Ride for one, Miss?"

Tifa smiled and reached for the handle. "Thank you, ye—"

A hand shot before her and grabbed the door.

"Two," a deep voice cut in.

Tifa spun around only to encounter a hard chest and unyielding arms that barricaded against any escape.

"Cl-Cloud!" she gasped. "What're you doing here?"

He didn't say anything, pressing a hand to the small of her back and waiting for her to step into the empty cart. Tifa cursed her racing pulse and gazed helplessly at the operator. The elderly man laughed and winked. "Looks like he's had his eye on you for a while."

Tifa ducked her head as the blush deepened, and she forced herself to quash any persistent retort or hearty Hear, hear! to his observation, scuttling into the lift if only to avoid further analysis. Cloud followed as stoic as ever, and the door creaked shut. "Well, enjoy your ride, folks!" the man called out. He swung a lever into gear and the car sputtered and rocked into motion.

Neither said anything for a long while: Tifa because she was too busy fidgeting on the seat, while Cloud seemed content to stare out the open window. Stare at the exact same things he'd already seen, her brain argued. At first she worried that Cloud would be angry that she'd gone out alone with a madman on the loose. Or perhaps he and Aerith had been concerned about her, or something had come up and they needed to make a quick getaway. She discreetly pulled her PHS out of her pocket and checked her missed calls. None. Everyone else was probably asleep or enjoying themselves at one of the games. When she thought about it, Tifa was sure she'd remembered Barret saying he'd like to try and win a stuffed moogle for Marlene. And Yuffie—well, everyone knew that she couldn't stay in the same place for any amount of time. Vincent and Red wouldn't enjoy the noise, but neither would have a problem with a quiet night in the room complete with a catered meal delivered straight to the door. In fact, she couldn't think of a single good reason—or bad reason for that matter—why Cloud would be here, and just as she felt she was about to burst with unknowing, he spoke.

"I don't get these things," he said.

And then he stopped talking.

"Hn-huh?" Tifa floundered for an intelligent response, and managed to get out, "The gondola?"

"Yeah. Why would anyone want to ride one?"

"You did earlier," she mumbled.

He hardly seemed fazed by her knowledge of his previous trip; instead, he nodded and agreed. "Yeah," he said, but offered nothing more: no detail or clue into his spiky head about his motives or why exactly he'd gone twice on a ride whose appeal he didn't understand.

"So why did you?"

The question burst out of her without heed, and Tifa wondered where this sudden impatience around Cloud had come from.

Cloud stared stupidly out the window. "I...I think I thought I'd get some perspective if I came up here. Like stuff would make sense—but there was nothing special. Just a bunch of dumb fireworks."

Biting her lip, Tifa shrank deeper against the seat. It was one thing to have her stand of independence intruded upon, and quite another to have her momentous epiphanies mocked and crushed with a simple, serious observation. She scoffed, deciding she really couldn't help it if she sounded a little annoyed. "Then why are you here?"

"Hm?"

"Why'd you come back if it was nothing special?"

"You weren't in your room," came the tense reply.

"But-"

"In fact, no one had seen you all night."

He looked at her then, and she could feel the strange hollowness in his eyes that had haunted her since she'd first met him again, melted by an indefinable pressure.

"I..." she floundered, recovering only with a sunshine grin and a wave to the window, "You can't expect me to stay in my room all night at the happiest place on Gaia."

"No," he finally conceded, though she didn't know whether it was to the fact that she couldn't stay in her room, or that he truly agreed this was the happiest place on the planet.

"But.." Tifa started, "why are you here?"

Cloud said nothing. She looked at his furrowed brow, the way he kept glancing out the window towards the horizon, as if the words he was searching for were just beyond his reach—a feeling Tifa knew all too well. "I mean, you found me earlier," Tifa clarified. "You didn't have go again if you were worried. I would've skipped it for you."

"I know," he mumbled. "I guess I thought you might be looking for the same thing."

And to that simple sentence, Tifa found she didn't have an answer. Was that what she had thought by coming up here? That it had never been about Cloud or Aerith or choices or fireworks. Or about the people who died versus those who lived. Or fairytales versus reality. It probably hadn't mattered what conclusion she'd drawn. All she'd wanted was some perspective; all she'd wanted was for her world to make sense.

She thought of a little boy with a busted lip and a promise at a well to be a hero, and she realized that it had always been what they'd both wanted.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Maybe."

And maybe then she smiled.

As the gondola neared the high point of the journey and began to slow with neither saying a word, she thought the topic was closed. Cloud was averse to small talk, and with pieces of her mind finally settled into place, she thought nothing more needed to be said. But Cloud spoke anyway.

"Hey Tifa?" She raised her head, but he wasn't looking at her. "This isn't so bad. Look."

Tilting her head back, she leaned out the window. The gondola was passing directly over where her night had begun. From this new higher perspective, she had a better view of the race, but this time, away from the stadium lights, the world continued spinning on its axis without going belly up on a careless cot. A golden yellow chocobo cocked its head and whistled as it ran, but now there were no blood-stained talons on vegetarian birds and no spills that crippled contestants, though she wasn't naïve enough to say those things didn't happen or that deals under the table didn't motivate a few of them. Shit happened. But it couldn't affect the bird that wanted to run forever or a small boy's wonder that sparkled in his eyes. Eyes that, in the morning, would cement a harsh SOLDIER resolve into their trip through wonderland, but for now were wide and blue.

And it occurred to Tifa that despite it all, somewhere Fluffy and the princess just might be cheering.

"Tifa? Did you see them?" Cloud carefully asked, when she didn't respond. "The chocobos on the race track?"

"Yeah," she smiled. " Yeah, Cloud, I did."

Both settled back into their seats, content to let the rest of the ride floated by in dreamlike silence. He held out his hand for her when they exited the cabin and never let it go as they weaved their way away from the crowds, away from the noise and judgmental eyes.

He stopped before the portal and scratched the back of his head. "Do you want to go back now?" he asked, and Tifa knew that no matter what she answered, they'd go together.

But she smiled, and he nodded and pulled her back towards the hotel. There was a gentleness to his actions that she hadn't seen in a long time, one he never showed to the whole group. And Tifa knew that tomorrow it would be gone, but the light that shone in her eyes wouldn't. But most of all she knew that everything she had to give would be summed up in the simple act of staying by his side.

She squeezed his hand as they walked through the lobby, and she thought he might've blushed.

It wasn't much, not even a fairytale, but maybe for now it was enough that neither was making the journey alone.