Title: We Shall Burn Together
Author: Traxits
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: General audiences
Content Notes: Chose not to warn. Covers the Nibelheim incident.
Word Count: 7170 words.
Summary: "I'm leaving for Midgar," Tifa breathed, and no matter that she hadn't so much as even considered this, the words felt right, felt the most right she'd had since her mother's death. "I'm joining SOLDIER, and someone has to learn the pass and escort the Shinra guys up, you know? Else the reactor will fail. You have to stay here, Cloud."
Author's Note(s): Original prompt from Fic_Promptly on Dreamwidth: Final Fantasy 7, Tifa, she's the one who joins SOLDIER.

( 01 )

"I'm going to join SOLDIER!"

Tifa went still for those words, and for a long moment she couldn't breathe. All of the boys had been leaving for that, inspired by Sephiroth and his sword and the way he had defended Midgar, the impossible strength he had. She had never wanted to admit it, but she wanted some of that strength for herself, to protect those left to her, to protect—

"You can't," she said, and she looked up to meet Cloud's blue eyes. They were hurt, and she hadn't meant to do that, hadn't intended—

"What?"

"You can't," she repeated, and she stood up before she moved to climb the boxes to sit beside him.

"Why not?" He looked more confused than hurt, and that eased Tifa some as she reached out to take his hand.

"Because," she said softly, "someone has to stay with Nibelheim."

"But you—"

"I'm leaving for Midgar," she breathed, and no matter that she hadn't so much as even considered this, the words felt right, felt the most right she'd had since her mother's death. "I'm joining SOLDIER, and someone has to learn the pass and escort the Shinra guys up, you know? Else the reactor will fail."

Cloud was quiet for a long time, much longer than she ever wanted to hear, but he nodded very slightly after a minute.

"My father will need the help," she added, and she smiled at him. "But tell you what, you stay here. Learn the pass. And when I come back as a SOLDIER, it'll be you who gets to escort me up there, yeah?"

Cloud smiled for that, and his hand wrapped around hers. "If you ever need me," he started, and Tifa's smile widened.

"You'll be there. I know."

( 02 )

The trip to Midgar was one of the longest and most frightening parts of Tifa's life. She'd never been so far from home before, and worse, her father couldn't exactly close the inn and take her there, not and have a place to come home to when it was all over. So instead, he packed her up with the martial artist who passed through from time to time, and Tifa spent the entire trip almost overloaded at the sheer difference between Nibelheim and the world outside.

Midgar itself was even bigger, and she swallowed as she stared up at the impossibly huge tower in the center, the beginning of the 'plate' that would surround it eventually.

(At least, that was what the flyers said, what the pictures showed, but she wasn't sure metal could do that. There was no way it would be able to just hang like that, was there?)

The line to sign in for the SOLDIER program was long and hot, and after more than just a cursory inspection, Tifa realized that she was probably the only girl in whole line. She swallowed, but she held firm. She wanted that strength, and just as she bent over the paper to sign her name, she felt a chill run through her. A glance up, and sure enough, it was Sephiroth walking past, black clothes fluttering behind him, sword and hair glinting the too-bright Midgar sun at the entire line. Her mouth went dry, and her grip on the pen tightened before she finished scribbling her name.

She pushed past a few other kids— almost none of them were any older than her, and those that were, weren't by much— and she watched as Sephiroth turned to enter the building.

"Sephiroth!" she shouted, and her hands trembled against the metal railing they'd set up to keep the hopefuls corralled. Sephiroth went still for his name being shouted—

No. That couldn't have been what caught his attention. There were dozens of kids shouting his name, but his head lifted when she'd said it, and he looked the line over, his eyes focusing on them for what might have been the first time.

Then those impossibly bright eyes met hers. His eyes glowed in a way that none of the paper's photographs had ever managed to capture, and she swallowed thickly as he stared at her. Then he smiled, waved very slightly, and headed inside.

Her heart started beating again, and air rushed into her lungs as she grinned widely. Her hand flexed, and she knew then. She could do this. She could be as powerful as him if she wanted. She could.

She would.

( 03 )

She pushed her body further than any of the other recruits ever did. Could. The simple fact was that she knew her body better than any of the other recruits, and every time she felt herself falter, she thought about those glowing eyes, about the fact that no one could ever have taken Sephiroth's mother away from him. He was too strong, and so help her, she was going to have that strength for herself, was going to be able to protect her father, Nibelheim, Cloud—

She shied from thoughts of Cloud. She had too much to do to let herself think about him much, but it didn't stop her from lingering on the first bundle of letters from home.

Johnny. Cloud. Cloud's mother. Her own father.

Her fingers shook, and she left them sealed in her locker for almost a full week. Her body was reshaping and changing all around her, and the last thing she needed was the distraction.

Until one day, one sparring session, she faltered, and the thought of her mother wasn't enough to get her up off the mat. She just stayed there, trembling, her body pushed too far, her mind too weak to drag herself back up.

If she'd been on the mountain, she'd have been dead.

That night, she curled up in her bunk, ice on her jaw, and she ripped open her letters. They were mostly nonsense, the same kind of rambling gossip. Cloud, his mother, and her father all talked about the same things. Johnny talked about Midgar, and she wondered if she'd get some free-time privileges soon. Maybe they could meet up and talk about home, make this world seem a little more real.

The next day, she didn't falter again, and when she did hit the mat, she had something new under her skin to push her back up to her feet.

She wrote back the night after that, careful to keep the tremors of her exhaustion from smearing the ink. When the letters had dried, she sealed them up, and on her way to the mess the next morning, she dropped them off.

She hadn't expected to run into another recruit at the letter slot. Very few of them bothered with letters, after all, and while a few of them got mail, almost none of them sent any back. He had a wide and easy grin though, and he caught her when she tried to jerk back to keep from running into him.

"Sorry," she breathed, and he laughed.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard anyone really laugh.

(She couldn't remember when she'd gotten here, when her life had turned into an endless series of drills and tests and food scarfed down before a fight could break out and cost her the period for her meal. She collapsed in the bed these days, barely able to haul herself up into the bunk.)

"Hey, no problem. You okay? You look a little overwhelmed," he said, and he tipped his hair, his stupidly spiky black hair falling all over the place. Then again, it wasn't like she could say much, was it? Not when her own hair nearly swept the floor these days.

She chuckled faintly, and she shook her head. "Long day," she admitted, and he snorted.

"At seven thirty in the morning? Man, I didn't think they put you first-years on nights."

She blinked, wondered if nights were even worse than what she was already doing, and she shook her head. "Not on nights. Just... pushing, you know? I plan to make First Class."

And that was a common enough boast. They all wanted First Class. They all wanted to stand next to Sephiroth and fight next to him and they all wanted to be him. They'd all lost too much for anything else.

"Yeah? You keep this up. I bet you do," he said, and he spoke so easy that it baffled her, that it made her stop and stare up at him, her eyes narrowing. He laughed at her, reaching down to brush her hair back from her face. "Until you do though," he added, "you might wanna think about braiding your hair, yeah? Keep it out of your face. The sparring partners later have no problem snatching it and dragging you around by it."

She tilted her head, and then she nodded. She'd been thinking about cutting it, honestly, but he had long hair, and Sephiroth...

"I'll think about it," she said, and he gave her a thumbs up before he headed off. Where to, she wasn't sure, but she dropped her letters in the box and headed on to the mess. She wasn't about to let herself miss a meal.

( 04 )

They all trained in hand to hand combat. There was no reason not to, but it wasn't until their third instructor that Tifa realized they were only being trained in hand-to-hand combat as a back-up. The thought sent a cold wash through her, right down her spine and into her gut. The idea that if she were disarmed (they were also being trained in most of the guns Shinra used, in various styles of swordplay) she might be reliant on something that she hadn't used since she was a recruit...

She focused more on her hand-to-hand training than anyone else, clocking in extra hours in the gym whenever she could.

Eventually, she went so far as to start picking up her meal, eating it as quickly as she could manage without being sick, and then ducking into the gym for the rest of her meal period. It was one of those times that she saw him.

He didn't say anything, just worked across the gym from her, his long black hair pulled back away from his face. He practiced in the same gear she did, too-tight leggings and a loose tank, but he wrapped his hands differently for his time on the punching bag. She watched him unwrap a few times, and eventually, she was bold enough to try wrapping the way he did.

He spotted her halfway through it, and he smiled very faintly before he dropped down onto the bench across from her. He held out a hand, and she bit her bottom lip before she handed the wrap over to him and let him show her.

It wasn't until he watched her on the bag that he finally murmured lowly, "You know, recruits aren't required to have so much hand-to-hand time."

She gritted her teeth at the thought, and then she shook her head. "No," she agreed. "We're not. But they're going to have to cut off my hands to disarm me."

She was never going to feel that helpless again. Not if she could stop it. Her hands tightened and when she hit the bag again, she knew she was too tense. The last thing she needed was to hurt herself.

He watched her a minute more, then sighed and moved over to hold the bag for her. "Well then," he said, and his voice wasn't quite right on the standard words, was just a little more accented than she thought he intended to be, "let's teach you how to fight without your hands, yes?"

She grinned, wide and easy and open for that.

He could only train her during her lunch period and in her free period. It meant she had to sacrifice heading out to town, getting time away from the Academy and the Shinra Tower.

It was worth it the first time she took down one of her instructors, and it wasn't until she took down all three that one of them finally asked her who the hell had been teaching her. She didn't even know his name, only that he pulled on a dark blue suit after his shower in the gym, so she just shrugged, smiling, and they handed her the first award of her class. She stroked her fingers against it, pocketed it, and went back to her training. Martial arts wasn't that much of a leap from rock climbing, not when her body was already used to the way she pushed it, and she wanted to be the best.

She would be.

She was.

( 05 )

It was her fourteenth birthday when she made Second Class. It was a very small ceremony, herself, most of her instructors, the other Third Classes who were moving up. In the back of the room, she could see that dark blue suit, and she smiled automatically at the man there. Tseng. She'd learned his name after one of the others had seen him leaving the gym, and she'd learned that the dark blue suit meant death in a way that their SOLDIER uniform didn't.

The uniform fit oddly, too tight across her chest and too big around her waist, but they had assured her that it would be fitted to her in the next day or two. She was grateful. She needed her uniform to fit correctly if she was ever expected to actually fight in it.

She was the youngest person to ever make Second Class, and while her instructors made a big deal about it, she remembered that Zack had done it not much older than her. He was seventeen and had just made First, but she had been there for that. There were so few First Class SOLDIERs that it was a big deal to watch someone new join the ranks. He'd spotted her, grinned, and winked at her from the stage.

She couldn't stop the way she had grinned back at him, and even as he cheerfully took his promotion and was congratulated for his young age, he'd announced easily that he figured they shouldn't make a big deal of it. They'd be welcoming someone even younger than him before much longer.

The words had stuck with her, and Tifa would have had to admit that they lit a fire that her fear just couldn't quite match. So she pushed even harder, worked harder, and finally, she'd been given her own sparring partner.

The girl couldn't have been much, if any, older than her, and Tifa met her eyes easily. She grinned, the blonde didn't, and two matches later, they were both laughing even as Elena had her in a headlock that Tifa was struggling to twist out of. They hit the locker room together, still talking and laughing and cutting up, and Tseng was waiting for them by Elena's locker.

Elena went still, but Tifa smiled warmly and held out her hand. She was sweaty and gross and in need of her shower, but it wasn't the first time he'd seen her like that. Ifrit's fire, he'd pushed her to that point more than once when he'd been teaching her.

He shook her hand and then pulled her in close to brush her hair back from her face and hand her a small stack of mail. Her eyes widened, and she bounced slightly.

"You should re-braid your hair," he said, and she waved a hand idly.

"Shower first. Then hair. When did the mail come?"

He shook his head. "This morning. Same as it always did."

"You just wanted the excuse?" she asked, glancing up at him, and he snorted very faintly.

"You're still determined to make SOLDIER?" he countered, and she swallowed before she nodded.

It wasn't the first time he'd asked her, and if she knew him even half as well as she thought she did, it wouldn't be the last. "I made a promise," she finally admitted, and he studied her for a long moment before he looked down at Elena. Elena had gone perfectly still the moment she spotted him, and she'd only relaxed marginally when she'd realized he was there for Tifa and not her. With him looking at her again, her back stiffened, and she snatched her towel out of her locker.

"Rosalind says hi," he said lowly, and then he left, before Elena could work out enough of the tension in her jaw to reply. She slammed her fist into her locker, scowled at his back, and Tifa hid her grin behind her letters.

"Rosalind?" she asked curiously, and Elena scowled at her too before stalking off toward the showers.

Tifa watched her go, shook her head, and then deposited her mail in her locker before she followed suit. In the showers, Elena was still, standing there with a glassy eyed look that Tifa wasn't sure she liked. She tilted her head, tried to decide what to do, then announced loudly, "I'm gonna need help if you're done. Too much hair."

Elena jerked, blinked up at her, then snorted. Tifa wondered if she realized how similar the motion was to the little snort Tseng did.

"Maybe you ought to cut that hair," she said, but she moved over to help Tifa all the same. The assistance wasn't actually necessary, but Elena's hair was short enough that Tifa didn't think she would have realized that. Instead, she just took advantage of the moment to distract her.

"Sephiroth hasn't cut his," Tifa replied, and she closed her eyes for a moment under the water. "And if he doesn't have to cut his..."

"You're not Sephiroth."

Tifa's eyes opened, and she grinned too sharp, too fierce, and too high on her most recent promotion to care. "No," she said. "I'm going to be better."

( 06 )

"You've got demons."

That was the only thing most people said to her when they realized that Tifa was only fourteen, and not only was she fourteen, but she had made Second Class SOLDIER in less than a year.

She supposed they were right. One had to have demons to be as driven as she was. Tseng would probably have agreed with that assessment, and she trusted Tseng's opinion on that kind of thing. Zack, on the other hand, just laughed when people said such things, and he'd have slung an arm over her shoulders and pulled her close and said, never losing that smile, that they needed to move on and stop being so damned jealous just because she was driven.

She had always wondered what drove Zack, because he was nearly as driven as she, and she couldn't help but wonder if maybe his demons bore some similarity to her own. She never asked though.

No one ever actually asked.

After all, that would have opened the door to talk about your own, and everyone had too many demons for that kind of weakness.

Zack took over sparring with her for swordplay, and Tifa had to admit, she was grateful. The sword always felt awkward and heavy in her hands, even the narrow bladed katana that Tseng had procured for her after he watched her drill the first time on her Second Class drills. The sword still felt strange, strapped on her hip with the rest of her uniform, next to the standard-issue gun that anyone who wasn't First Class was required to wear. She was better with the gun than with the blade, and that never ceased to make the other Turks laugh.

She had to admit, she enjoyed spending time with the Turks. Their office was loud and boisterous and warm enough that sometimes, she could forget home, could forget the quiet solitude of the mountains and the warm crackle of the fire in the inn's fireplace. Reno, in particular, tended to pull her into his lap every chance he got, and she couldn't help but laugh at him. She was the Turks' little sister, and after a bristling confrontation of Elena coming to drag her off for sparring, they had all gotten used to having her there.

Elena had taken a little more coaxing, but eventually, even she was there in the evenings during their free period. The two of them stretched out on the floor in Tseng's office with the door open, and the Turks spilled in and out of the bullpen, weapons tossed back and forth, papers precariously perched on the very edges of desks only to crash to the floor the first time there was roughhousing. It had taken Tifa a little while before she realized that it was part of the game, that whoever was clumsy enough to hit the desk got to spend the next half hour re-organizing papers and putting them back where they were supposed to go.

If you were really clumsy, you had to fill the papers out too.

And she and Elena weren't the only ones to drift in and out. Reeve Tuesti from Urban Development— he always smelled faintly like tangerines, and Tifa had wondered at that until she heard Reno talking about the smell of reactors, and she realized that the tangerines and sharp tang of grease was from the reactors themselves— came and went as regularly as Tifa did. He often smiled at her, soft and easy and warm, even when he looked so stressed that she thought he might snap. Rufus came and went too, and Tifa was quiet whenever he was there.

She wasn't sure she could be anything else, not when he was so poised, so drawn. The only person he relaxed around was Tseng, but she wasn't sure anyone else noticed that. He smiled too, but there was something practiced about his smile, something that made her think of Cloud and the vulnerability she'd always seen lurking under there. He curled up on Tseng's couch more often than not and slept, and she wondered at that even though she never asked.

Then came her first mission, her first real mission, one where she geared up with the others. Tseng came to see her off, but it was Reno who had tucked in the PHS in her pocket. He'd murmured that their numbers were all programmed in, and if anything went sideways, she was supposed to call them as soon as possible. She stood on the bumper of the truck for a long moment, watching Tseng slowly vanish, and then she finally dropped down onto the seat assigned to her.

Her fingers flexed against the hilt of her katana, and she steeled herself for the mission. For the fact that this wasn't training. This was real, and even more importantly, it was her first chance to prove herself. She could taste something too sharp in the back of her mouth, and she swallowed it back, looking up at the dawn starting to break over the sky. The mission wasn't anything scary, it was just guard duty, but that reminder didn't soothe her nerves.

( 07 )

She spent far longer staring at her newest orders than she ever should have. She simply couldn't quite seem to process...

Nibelheim.

Home.

She'd made First Class only the day before, and she should have been celebrating, being able to go home and proudly say that she was... She had...

But no. She wasn't sure she wanted to go home. Not yet. Not without enough time to get used to this, to—

She pulled her gear on. First Class didn't have a uniform, so the ill-fitting thing she'd suffered through had been burned cheerfully by herself and Elena and the Turks the night before. Instead, she had a skirt loose enough to move in, lightly armored leggings that Reno had helped her pick out. She wondered if he and Rude hadn't made her clothes for her, all things given, because they fit like a dream and were reinforced with the same subtle work their suits were.

Her shoes had been a gift from Tseng, her gloves a gift from Rude, and she flexed her fingers in the leather just to hear it creak. To reassure herself...

She tied her hair back, letting it fall mostly around her face with a little rush of pleasure.

It didn't make going home any better.

The PHS, at least, was a constant weight in her pocket though, and she wore her katana. She left the gun in her locker, and the moment she hopped out of the truck right outside of town, she wished she hadn't. The mountains weren't exactly the most hospitable, and more often than not, death came from above instead of close enough for a sword or fists—

Zack's hand clapped hard on her shoulder, and she glanced up with a shaky smile.

"Long time," she said softly, answering the question he hadn't asked. He hadn't needed to. She hadn't needed to say it. It was a 'long time' for all of them. Sephiroth stepped out of the truck last, and he surveyed her hometown slowly.

"Your hometown?" he asked, and she never quite got used to the quality of his voice, to how it shivered down her back and under her skin, how it twisted low—

"Yes, sir," she breathed.

"You should visit your family. We'll have the time for you to."

And just like that, he started toward the inn, toward her father's business. She shivered once more, then jogged ahead of him.

The door still creaked when she opened it, and she smiled faintly for the familiarity. Her father stared at her for a long moment before his mouth finally opened, and before he could say anything, she smiled widely and said, "I did it."

The entire night was a blur of laughter and tears and hugging. Sephiroth watched them curiously, as though he'd never felt such things before, as though he were living a little through her, and Zack joined in the cheers, regaling her father with tales of her training that Tifa hadn't even known he'd heard about. Then it was late, and they retired, and Tifa sat on her childhood bed in her home, wondering when, exactly, the room had stopped suiting her.

She was the first one to meet up at the manor. She was stretching when she spotted him, and her breath caught faintly as Cloud walked up, pack on his shoulder, rope coiled on one hip.

"Hey," he breathed, and Tifa smiled, soft and slow and easy. Vulnerable. That was what he'd always managed to make her think, and somehow, it hadn't changed.

"Hey," she replied.

"You did it."

"You did too, apparently. Are you our guide up?"

He glanced past her toward the path up the mountain, and his smile softened. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen that kind of peace on anyone's face before.

"Yeah. I... didn't expect it to be you and Sephiroth I was guiding up though."

Tifa managed a little laugh. "I didn't expect it either," she admitted, and then Zack jogged up, and only a moment later, Sephiroth appeared. He didn't jog, but she would have bet that he and Zack had left the inn at the same time.

The trip up wasn't bad, even if it was a little more exciting than she would have preferred, but then Sephiroth started laughing and everything went sideways, and the PHS in her pocket had never felt so heavy.

It was a few nights later that she finally called, but before anyone could pick up, she heard something outside, and she left the PHS on her desk as she headed out. She could just faintly hear someone answering the phone, but there was smoke, and it—

Nibelheim was ablaze, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't make herself understand what, exactly, she was looking at. Cloud was gagging, leaning against one of the buildings, and she rushed to him, getting him over her shoulder as she dragged him from the fire. She could see Sephiroth ahead, and the moment she was reassured that Cloud was safe, she broke into a run. Her father grabbed Sephiroth's shoulder, and her breathing stopped as Sephiroth cut him down with not even a look. Her heart stopped, her breathing stopped, and when it finally started again, it was only to try to tell whoever was screaming to stop.

Her mouth closed and the sound cut off, and her throat was so raw she wouldn't have been surprised to see blood if she wiped her mouth. She rushed forward, dropping down beside her father, and she stayed there until Zack came. He touched the back of her shoulder, and she looked up at him. Cloud was the one who snatched up the masamune, and before she could stop him, he charged into the reactor after Sephiroth, shouting.

She plunged forward just in time to watch Cloud be cut open, same as her father, and she rushed to catch him before he crashed against the metal floor. She couldn't see through the tears in her eyes, but she didn't have to.

"How could you," she whispered, and she looked up at Sephiroth before the words escaped her again. "How could you!"

She pulled Cloud in against her, and she stroked his hair back before she reached for her Cure materia, just enough to stabilize him, just enough to reassure her that he could last.

Then she took up the Masamune (it was too long for her, but she didn't know that anything except for Sephiroth's sword could hurt him), and she heard Zack's shout behind her as she lunged.

( 08 )

She drifted in and out. She saw flashes, red hair and black hair and glinting light off glasses, but she wasn't coherent enough to figure out just what, exactly, she was looking at. She heard whispers, felt hands on her, and she tried to push them off, tried to protest.

"All dead," she whispered, and she had no idea how many times she'd whispered that, but what good had her strength done her. "Too weak—"

"They were too weak, yes."

That voice was familiar, twisted and wrong in her ears, and she shied from it instinctively. No, that wasn't what she'd meant—

She came to once fully awake, and she was strapped down to a table, the heavy buckles digging into her skin, her flesh crawling as something dripped into her veins, and she screamed more than she'd ever screamed in her life, bucking and straining. She managed to rip one of the straps away, and there was shouting around her as she jerked around to pull on the second one. She went still as she saw Zack laying there, his eyes open and sightless at the ceiling. There was blood caked around his mouth, blood and spittle and she could feel it suddenly on her own face.

Something shoved her down against the table, and she struggled, screaming all over again before they managed to wrest her back down. Everything hurt, and eventually her screams gave way to sobs. Then, blessed relief as she passed out into the darkness of Shiva's embrace all over again.

The next time she woke, there were tubes everywhere, down her throat and in her nose and she slammed against the side of the prison caging her because when she opened her eyes, it did nothing but burn. She couldn't see anything, couldn't breathe, couldn't think—

Then just as suddenly, something ripped the mask off her face and she could feel air and she gulped at it greedily before she started heaving. There was nothing to come up, nothing for her to vomit out, but it didn't stop her body from trying. She could hear someone else doing the same, a hand heavy and familiar on her back. She finally risked opening her eyes again to look over at Zack. He coughed weakly, and then he collapsed on the floor of the room.

"I got you," she whispered, but her throat hurt too much for the words to come out as anything more than a little croak. She looped his arm over her shoulder, and she helped get him up on the table nearby. It didn't take long to find their clothes— she hadn't noticed she was naked, her senses had been so overloaded, she hadn't even noticed he was naked at first— and she dressed herself with shaking hands.

Nothing fit. Her clothes were too small, and she didn't dare leave them to try to find something new, she just pulled them on, but even her gloves were too small, and she plucked the materia from them before she shoved them into a back pocket.

Dressing Zack was trickier, but before she even got his shirt on, he was a little more awake, trying to help her. She made a little noise at him, something meant to be reassuring, but she wasn't sure how much of that she managed. He wasn't any better off than her though, and she glanced up at the stairs for a long minute before she moved to sit beside him.

She lost track of how long they sat there on the edge of that table, broken test tubes behind them, and she couldn't smell anything but tangerines. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to eat another citrus fruit again after this.

But first, she had to get out of here, had to get both of them out of there, and she exchanged bleary looks with Zack. He managed a faint smile, gave her a thumbs-up, and then they braced against each other as they lurched toward the stairs. They stumbled a few times, but they didn't stop, didn't check the rest of the house. They just stumbled out and Tifa froze, blinking against the moonlight, at the gate. There was a patrol that the two of them had to slip past, but that meant there was a bike to steal, and they did.

She wrapped around him, leaning forward and closing her eyes as she breathed the mountain air, and the bike purred under them both as they tore across the town, escaping into the night. The days blurred one into another, and they both did their best, alternating driving and riding, trying to sleep some when the other drove the bike. They traded the bike for passage to Junon in Costa del Sol, and from there, it was easy enough to charm a ride toward Kalm from a farmer having dropped off his most recent harvest for sale. They rode in the back of the truck, laughing at one another in the sunlight.

"Mercenaries," Zack said cheerfully, and Tifa snorted as she flipped her hair back.

"Mercenaries?" she asked, and her voice was only a little broken. "That's your big plan?"

"Yeah, well, better than anything you've come up with." He laughed faintly until he started coughing again, and she tried to ignore how much that twisted low in her gut. His coughing sounded bad, as bad as hers did, but who even knew what had been done to them? Or even how long they'd been in there?

Neither of them had let themselves really think about it, and neither of them had been bold enough to try to find out.

They'd agreed wordlessly that it didn't matter until they got back to Midgar, and Tifa turned slightly to watch the city coming up on the horizon.

"Should walk," she whispered, and Zack blinked before he nodded his agreement slowly. Walking in with the mass of people always coming into Midgar guaranteed that they would be overlooked, and that was their best bet for now.

They still weren't sure who had—

It was the Shinra mansion, after all.

They left the farmer and his truck in Kalm, and Tifa traded a materia for enough gil to buy clothes that actually fit. Between that and the pack to hide her gear, she was fairly sure no one would recognize her. Her fingers went back to her hair, and she swallowed faintly at the reminder. She needed to cut it. It wasn't the same, after all, after all the time in the mako-infused goo of the test tube, and it was distinctive. But it was hers. Sephiroth—

The name sent shivers down her back, and she heaved automatically for the feeling. Zack's hand against her back was comforting, and she glanced up at him with a very small smile.

( 09 )

"Under-Seven's security is always lighter."

"Yeah, but Under-Six is where we're actually going," Zack protested, and he sighed as Tifa didn't so much as even slow her steps. He reached out and caught her elbow, and she scowled back at him. Neither of them were at 100% yet, and the last thing they needed to do was be anything but unified at the gates. She let him stop her, and she shifted the pack on her shoulder. Everything still ached, and her body still didn't respond to her quite the way she wanted it to.

"So help me, Zack, your girlfriend will be there when we get there." Tifa straightened up, trying to make herself seem taller as she looked up at him. It was true. Unless it wasn't, but she wasn't sure she wanted to consider that. She knew Zack didn't, so they had simply both taken to pretending that they somehow knew it was true instead of just hoped.

"Tifa," he whispered, and his voice cracked, and she reached up to punch him in the shoulder.

"Don't pull that on me," she snapped. "You know this is the best plan. Under-Seven, get our bearings, then head over to Six. She would want you safe."

And Tifa couldn't admit it to him, but he was the only person she had left to keep safe. She had failed literally everyone else, and so help her, she had no plans to let him change that for her. She would get him into Midgar safely, see him to his girlfriend, then figure out what the hell she was doing.

Figure out how many weeks or months she'd lost.

(It wasn't longer than that. It couldn't be. She wouldn't let it be, no matter what her clothes had told her when she'd first gotten out of the test tube.)

She reached up to take his hand, and they headed on to the checkpoint for Under-Seven, where, as she'd guessed, there was one tired guard who just waved them through. He didn't even ask for their IDs, which was just as well, because Tifa hadn't come up with a plan around that, if she was honest. She'd been banking on exactly this. She shivered as they crossed the wall into the city, and she closed her eyes for a second before she asked, "I don't remember the Plate being this close to done, do you?"

Zack shook his head. They'd both noticed it outside, but it was far more obvious when they were standing under it like this. Tifa could hear the trains, and that was reassuring if only because it made her feel like a recruit all over again. She glanced around them, and she started toward a vendor who had papers, when a sharp noise caught her attention.

She swiveled, and Zack was right behind her, his hand reaching for the buster sword that he'd frankly refused to take off.

She stared at Cloud, not quite comprehending what she was looking at, and she glanced back at Zack before she stepped forward.

"Tifa," he breathed, and the groceries he'd been carrying were rolling across the ground, smeared with a powdery gray sand that she didn't remember being here last time. "You... You're alive—"

"You're alive," she whispered, and she closed the distance then, wrapping her arms around him. She'd scarcely started to pull back from him when shouting started, and she looked up just in time to see Zack pulling his buster sword off his back.

"Go!" he shouted, and she froze for just a second, torn between Zack and Cloud, not sure who she needed to stay with more. But Cloud pulled her behind him, his groceries forgotten, and she watched as MPs descended on Zack. He cut down more of them than she knew he would be comfortable with. They were just grunts, after all, generally the recruits that hadn't managed to hack it in the SOLDIER program, and she knew that she would have felt badly for mowing through them like that.

But then Zack was on his knees, his sword was gone, and one of them put a gun to his forehead—

Cloud snatched her around a building, and Tifa pressed back against it, gasping for air. She heard a gunshot, and she shoved past Cloud to see—

Zack wasn't dead, wasn't fighting the MPs anymore. He was just on his knees, limp and obviously passed out as they trussed him up. She glanced back to Cloud, and she asked sharply, "What's going on?"

"You've been missing for five years," Cloud retorted sharply. "All the First Class SOLDIERs have been."

The words locked her up enough for Cloud to coax along behind him, and eventually, they were in a bar, tucked away in Seven somewhere. Seventh something, named for the sector the same way most of the places in Midgar were. She couldn't stop the trembling, and when Cloud put her in a bed, she just stayed there, shaking and gasping, unable to make herself focus.

Five years? She'd been... They'd been...

No wonder none of her clothes had fit.

Nibelheim had been gone for five years, and she'd been in that tube, and it...

"Miss Tifa?"

The little voice broke into her thoughts, and Tifa twisted around to look at the young girl standing in the doorway. Her head was against the door frame, and for a moment, she looked so much like Zack that Tifa's heart twisted. Then she smiled, and she asked easily, "You hungry? Daddy tol' me to ask."

Tifa hesitated, and then she shook her head. She wiped away the tears she could feel in her eyes, and she followed the girl into the rest of the bar. Cloud was wiping down the counter, and she swallowed before she managed to ask, "You got a knife back there?"

He hesitated only a second before he offered her one, and she reached back before he could stop her, wrapping her hand around her hair and pulling the blade right across it all. It was sharp enough that it cut through even the heavy fall of her hair, and she tightened her hold on the tail of her hair. She'd held onto it for too long. Had shaped herself to match Sephiroth.

Now it was time to exceed him.

She looked up at Cloud, handed him back his knife, and she twisted the length of her hair around one hand. "So where is it?" she asked, and Cloud glanced down for a second before he shrugged.

"Where's what?"

"There's gotta be someone around here planning to overthrow Shinra," she said. "I want in."

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I currently have no plans to continue this, because writing any more would pretty much mean needing to rewrite the whole game, but if you have any more individual scenes you'd like to see with SOLDIER!Tifa, feel free to mention them! I love prompts, and if I write anymore with SOLDIER!Tifa, I'll add them on as chapters to this piece.