Her mother has a voice born for storytelling, quiet and smooth, as steady as anything. Papa is arguably more exciting—he will inflect his voice or growl or act out sword fights until her sides ache with laughter, but Mama speaks and Tifa listens, wide-eyed and breathless, the words reverberating inside of her, safety and love and all the things Tifa wishes will come out her throat some day instead of a little girl voice that pitches too high.
"Tell me a story," Tifa begs.
Mama stops before she can tug the blankets up to Tifa's neck. This close she can see Mama's eyes crease when she smiles. "What kind of story?"
"You know," Tifa says exasperatedly, because she does. "The best kind."
"Mhmm. And how do those start exactly?"
Tifa's face scrunches. "Mama."
Her mother laughs and wraps her arms around her. Tifa tries to resist snuggling into her embrace and fails, eyes closing when fingers thread their way through her hair. She inhales soap and honeysuckle and nose pressed into Mama's sternum she thinks home, feeling her voice vibrate through her when Mama says her favorite words in the world, the ones the best kind of stories always start with.
She says, "Once upon a time..."
.
The words dig a hole in her after everything. Mama's gone and no amount of once upon a time's can make it better, can ever hope to fill the space left behind. She makes the vigil to Mount Nibel anyway, lips cracked, cheeks wind stung, because despite everything she still believes. There's a power in those stories, a magic of her very own, and she clings to the possibility of happy-ever-after. She can't—won't—accept anything else.
She still clings to them, even after she falls and her father's face is the only one that greets her when she finally wakes up.
.
"I'm going to join SOLDIER," Cloud says. His hair is bright against the darkness. Tifa swings her legs and thinks: but you've always been so small. Little Cloud Strife, so shy, so skittish, clinging to his mother's skirts. Flushing to his ears when Tifa smiles at him. Getting older, picking fights. Losing. The runt of the litter.
She listens though because this is the most he's ever said to her and there's—something. A light in his eyes, a childish certainty in his words, and goosebumps prickle over her flesh.
There's a part of her that's been gathering dust—set aside in the wake of her grief—and it's like Cloud is shining a light over it now, reflecting all the bleeding, jagged, hopeful edges of her.
She picks it up, dusts it off.
Makes a wish.
(She'll never stop wanting Mama's stories to be real.)
"Let's make a promise," Tifa says.
.
This is a beginning:
Her right cheek throbs. Her knuckles are scraped and bleeding. Every part of her aches.
Master Zangan's eyes gleam.
He says, "Again."
She's never felt more alive.
.
Her father is not nearly so understanding.
"I should kill him." His hair is mussed from running his hand through it. Tifa watches him try to pace a hole through the floor, shoulders tense, fists clenching and unclenching. "You're just a child—you shouldn't be getting hurt like this. It's not right."
"It's training, Dad. No pain, no gain, right?" She smiles but the tightness around his mouth doesn't ease. She sighs. She wants to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
"You have a black eye—"
"Had. I had a black eye. I don't anymore because there's this thing called restore materia." She's normally not this snarky with her father—she's always nothing if not respectful—but she's tired. She just wants this conversation over with.
He barks out a laugh. "Oh, it's okay for a grown man to beat up a girl half his age so long as he heals her afterward. I had no idea!" He shakes his head. "I should have never indulged you in this. I don't know what I was thinking. This was never going to work out."
Tifa freezes, a familiar tension thrumming through her, one she's gotten to know intimately well these past few weeks. She feels it every time before she squares off in battle, everything in her drawing to a still, the world narrowing down to the hold of her opponent's arms, the spread of his feet.
She curls her fingers into her palms, digging in her nails. "Why? Because I'm a girl?"
His eyes, hard and angry, soften imperceptibly. He sinks down into the chair beside her, resting a hand over her own. She barely resists drawing hers away. "Tifa—please understand why this isn't easy for me. You're all I have left." He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, the faint quirk of his lips looking more sad than anything else. "And to me you'll always be that little girl, you know. The one who demanded fairy stories and bullied me into giving piggyback rides. Can you blame me for wanting to keep that little girl safe?"
She swallows the lump in her throat. "I understand, okay, I do." Her fingers unfurl at last; she turns over her hand, lacing her fingers through his own. "But I'm not that little girl anymore. I want—no, I need to do this." Her words come faster, driven by desperation. "Master Zangan chose me. Out of all the boys in the village he chose me, not them. That means something."
It means everything. That he saw something in her he didn't see in them, some potential lurking under her skin she couldn't yet recognize herself—it makes her glow just thinking about it.
Her father searches her face and sighs. With resigned humor he says, "You're not going to give up on this, are you?"
"Not a chance," she says, and that's the end of that.
.
All of Nibelheim's boys leave eventually, hoping for something greater than small town glories, but the ones who failed and returned or haven't yet mustered up the courage to leave look at her differently. Their eyes skitter away from the corded muscle in her arms. No one asks her to arm wrestle anymore, not even jokingly. They all know who'll win.
"She's pretty enough, don't get me wrong," she overhears one day and it shouldn't sting but oh, it does, it does, because these were her childhood companions, her playmates, her friends, "but she has more muscle than me and that's just a turnoff."
Tifa swallows and walks away. Her shoulders do not quiver; her back is straight and proud. She has nothing to be ashamed of and yet—
"They're foolish little boys," says Master Zangan. She sits with her arms around her legs, blood smeared off the corner of her mouth. She'd been distracted during their spar, never a good thing when your opponent is as renowned a fighter as her master is. "Your strength scares them and it should. You could break them in half easily."
He says it with so much pride that a smile pulls at her busted lip. It stings sweetly. "Is that an observation or a suggestion?"
"Take it as you will," he says cheerfully. "Now come. Focus your mind on the battle in front of you and nothing else."
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and does.
Each pound of muscle was hard fought, hard earned. Tifa bares the hard planes of her stomach for all to see, grinning when eyes flick nervously away. She can splinter wood; crush a man's ribcage with one balled up fist. She will not let the words of little boys cow her.
.
She visits with Ms. Strife sometimes. She's a pretty, vibrant woman whose whole face lights up when Tifa stops by for tea or to help with the vegetable garden out back. Tifa kneels down next to her in the dirt and roots out weeds, the sun warm on her arms. It's good work with good company.
Cloud, surprisingly, is not the focus of their conversations. "I already know how he is," Ms. Strife says with a smile, never elaborating beyond 'well' when she asks after him. "I want to hear all about you, dear."
And so Tifa tells her how that day's training session has gone or the latest string of disapproving glances. The latter makes Ms. Strife look at Tifa with a knowing sort of sadness. It's more than sympathetic—it's commiserating. Tifa remembers all at once the whispers she's heard as long as she can remember and feels wretched. Ms. Strife just smiles thinly, waving her guilt away.
"Small towns breed narrow minds." She looks so old in that moment, nothing like the woman who warmly teases her or fusses over her scrapes and bruises. "There's a lot of talk about community—about your neighbors being as good as family—but should you find yourself unmarried and pregnant, well. Suddenly you're the village pariah."
Ms. Strife was young, Tifa knew. Too young for a son nearly full grown. A lump wedges in her throat at the thought—of being all alone save for the child growing in your belly, not even a real person yet, more imaginary than anything, because the town you've lived in your entire life, that loved you and reared you, turned their back on you. Just like that.
Some of this must have shown on her face because Ms. Strife softens all at once, that terrible, ancient weariness chased out by a quieter wistfulness.
"It's not as bad as it was." She pats Tifa's hand, like Tifa is the one who needs consoling, and all Tifa can do is stare—she wants to say something, anything, but nothing's good enough. She just sits there like a lump, watching Ms. Strife somehow find it within herself to smile. "I've lived here a long time. They can whisper all they want. I don't regret any of it. I have a beautiful son who makes me proud every single day and a friend in a marvelously strong, delightful girl who helps mind my cabbages. Who could ask for anything more?"
Tifa blinks rapidly, eyes misting. There are so many things she wants to say—so many words jumbling up inside of her, one big tangle of you're too good for this town and you're the strongest person I've ever known and you remind me what it's like to have a mother, but all she says is "You're my friend too," awkwardly, clumsily, and turns as red as her son when Ms. Strife giggles.
.
She's long since traded storybooks for newspapers and over the years she's read them by the hundreds, her father sliding them across the table to her when he's done.
He raises his eyebrows the first couple of times. "You've never shown this much interest in a world that wasn't fictional," he teases, holding it just out of arm's reach.
Tifa shrugs, hoping her smile doesn't look as plastic as it feels. "Well, I'm a part of the world, aren't I? Might as well know what's going on in it."
For a second she wonders if he's going to see right through her—fears her intentions are written in capital letters for the whole world to see—but she must have been more believable than she thought because he never makes a show of handing over the newspapers after that.
She turns them over and over and never sees Cloud's name in a single one.
.
"General Sephiroth is coming," Zangan says one day, and Tifa draws herself up straight, catching the edges of Zangan's smile as her head leans off the windowpane. "They're going to inspect the old mako reactor and have asked for a guide: someone who knows the terrain but can also handle themselves should the situation call for it. I said I knew just the person for the job."
Master Zangan grins at her. Tifa has to flatten her hand on the window seat to keep from swaying. "Me? I'm—" She swallows; wets suddenly dry lips. "Why not you?"
"Why not you?" he volleys back. "You're capable. More than in fact. I know you'll do well."
She flushes at his softened smile. They've been master and student for years now and while Zangan's never been sparse with praise it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the strength of his conviction.
"I'll make you proud," she says.
He says, "You already have."
.
The stars are bright that night. Tifa leans against the wall outside the inn and watches them, something tightening in her lungs. Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, she dares give it name.
Hope, she thinks: less tangible and yet more concrete than a box of newspaper clippings underneath her bed.
.
Later she'll lie to herself. His eyes burned, she'll think, lying awake in the dark, hand pressed to where her scar stretched over her stomach. The feel of his hand made a shudder run down her spine. She knew there was something wrong with him from the start.
She didn't—couldn't; had no way of suspecting what those closest to him had no idea of—but the not knowing will haunt her as much as everything else.
.
But that is then and this is now, Cloud's hero in the flesh, all silvered hair and inward eyes and a piercing, unwavering gaze when his focus turns out. General Sephiroth cuts a figure too large for one of her storybooks, so cool and imposing that she can't help but wonder when the last time he smiled was. His companion, Zack, is the complete opposite.
"Zangan's apprentice, huh?" He looks her over and Tifa braces herself, knowing it probably won't go over well if she tells him to keep his eyes up here, thank you very much, but there's nothing skeevy about his gaze. Just assessing. "And...you're fifteen, right?" She nods, hesitantly, and Zack's eyebrows raise. He lets out a low whistle. "That's seriously impressive."
She politely thanks him, her smile actually reaching her eyes, but a part of her can't help but be a bit detached from it all, ears straining for a name she's turned over in her head countless times and her eyes for a golden head in a sea of blue.
"Looking for someone?" Zack asks. There's a strange smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. Tifa hesitates.
"Yes," she says. "Do you know a Cloud Strife?"
Something in his gaze flickers but it's gone so quickly that Tifa wonders if she just imagined it.
"Nope," he says. "Can't say I do."
Her face falls. The sting of disappointment isn't new—she corners Shinra personnel whenever they're in town to ask the same thing—but she'd hoped it might be different this time. Zack sees this and softens, his hand settling on her shoulder in a brief, consolidating squeeze. "Buck up, kiddo."
She scowls. Zack chuckles, looking like he's sorely tempted to muss her hair. He thankfully refrains.
Her father and Zangan see them off. Papa whispers to her hair he never should've let her out the house in that outfit; she laughs, kisses his cheek, pretending not to notice the sheen to his eyes. Her master just nods. They've already said all they've had to say.
She straightens her hat, squares her shoulders, and retraces the steps of her childhood, oblivious to the eyes that seek her out despite how many times they try to look away.
.
She scowls and stomps her feet like a child but she can only stand in sullen silence for so long. "What, are you too good to talk to me or something?"
She can't make out any of his face aside from a little of his mouth and nose. He grunts, refusing to look at her full on, and she sighs and plops on the ground, resigning herself to a long wait.
.
"Welcome home," Papa says, and her throat did not ache, because she did not know it would be the last time he'd ever say those words to her.
They talk over dinner and she teases that the wrinkles fanning from his eyes have deepened and goes to bed unaware that in three days time everyone and everything she's ever loved will be ash.
.
Papa's hands, cool and slick with blood. His eyes, open, unseeing. A sword juts from his belly, the one that ran him through.
Grief pierces her breastbone, sharp, splintering, but her hands are steady.
.
Once upon a time a boy and girl met beneath the stars and made a promise that they only bore witness to.
But for all the once upon a time's she has stored in her heart, she is no swooning maiden in need of defending.
.
And yet—
.
Her head is swimming, but she can see the curve of a cheek, the smear of red her fingers leave across it.
Red everywhere, drip, drip, dripping, but there is gold too, somehow, inexplicably, and she wants to cry in relief.
Cloud, she thinks, and then: Papa, oh Papa.
.
But that isn't the end.
.
Marlene's eyes are luminous in her face. "Tell me a story, Tifa?"
The hands smoothing the blanket over her tremble just slightly, and Tifa pulls back, clasping them tightly in her lap. She breathes until she's sure she can smile and not have it be a lie.
"Of course," she says, and begins.