Disclaimer:I don't own anything relating to Square Enix or Final Fantasy VII, don't sue me.

Notes: Bah! Don't bother telling me that the Enchantment Night at the Gold Saucer setting is over used, because I already know that. XD I tried to resist writing this fic, but I failed… (blame it on wanting to escape writing an 11 page paper for my English class heheh)

Warning! This story contains implications of RufusxTifa.

Black, White and Grey All Over

Enchantment Night. A magical night at the Gold Saucer where the rides, the shows and efven some of the food, is free… for couples that is. And there all alone, on a bench in Wonder Square Tifa sat, sipping away on a slushie that she had had to pay for. And why did she have to pay for it? Because she was the only person at the Gold Saucer without a date.

Vincent had decided to take a walk with Red XIII and cash in on the food he had been missing out on for the last 40 years, she had seen Barrett and Yuffie head toward the Chocobo Races, arguing about who knows what; Cait Sith and Cid, who had already fallen asleep, had stayed at the hotel, and, much to Tifa's dismay, Aeris seized the opportunity to take Cloud on the date she had promised him.

It wasn't that Tifa had a problem with Aeris going on a date with Cloud, Aeris was quickly becoming one of her best friends. It was just that Tifa herself had really been hoping to go with Cloud to Enchantment Night, but had been too shy to ask. Aeris was more open about those sorts of things and the more time went on, the more Tifa saw Cloud's attention drift away from her to Aeris. And although she would never get in the way of their relationship, if they chose to start one, Tifa couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that her childhood friend was beginning to fall in love Aeris instead of her. Tifa finished her slushie and was about to head back to the hotel and get to bed early, when an announcement came over the loud speaker.

"Fireworks at the Gondola ride in five minutes!"

"Maybe the fireworks will cheer me up." Tifa thought to herself, and decided to make her way towards the Gondola ride. After paying her GP to ride the ride, she got in line and waited.

"You're by yourself?" A worker asked her when she had reached the front of the line.

"Yeah." Tifa responded, trying to sound like it wasn't a big deal.

"We have a single here!" The worker shouted to his coworker controlling the ride. "Bring around that cart with the other single in it."

"But-"

"Just do it, it's a busy night tonight, we need to squeeze as many people into these carts as we can."

"Another person who's here without a date? I guess I'm not the only one after all."

The Gondola cart came to a stop and the worker told her to get inside. The man inside opened his mouth to say something, but before he had gotten the chance the gate was shut and the cart moved off away from the loading dock. Tifa looked at the man across from her, who was scowling in the direction of the workers and was obviously not happy about having to share his cart. Without saying a word to Tifa, he turned to look out the window, showing no interest in acknowledging her.

"Great. This is what I get for trying to cheer myself up I guess." Tifa thought, suddenly wishing she had just gone back to the hotel.

Tifa looked out the window for awhile, watching all the people down below, before turning her attention back to the man in the cart. He was a handsome guy no doubt, dressed in an expensive looking black 'Elixir Sports' sweat-jacket with white lettering and matching pants. His blond hair fell over his ice blue eyes as he stared out of the Gondola ride. Tifa was about to go back to staring out the window herself, when it hit her.

"I've seen this guy somewhere before."

"Excuse me. Do I know you from somewhere?"

The man turned to face her and studied her for a moment before a crooked smile spread across his handsome face.

"Why yes Miss Lockheart, I believe you do." He answered in an unmistakably cold and arrogant, yet velvety voice. A voice Tifa had heard before, the night President Shinra was killed.

"Rufus Shinra." Tifa's eyes widened in fear for a moment before she felt hatred consume her and she prepared to smash his brains all over the wall of the Gondola cart.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you." He said noticing her anger build and pulling a gun halfway out of his jacket pocket to show her he was armed.

Tifa realized she was at a disadvantage and dropped her offense, reclining back in her seat but staying ready to spring at any second, in case he decided to try something.

Rufus chuckled at her tenseness, "Try to relax a bit Lockheart, I'm not exactly working right now, if you couldn't tell. Consider us on a temporary truce."

"Yeah, like I'm going to buy that." Tifa thought, not ready to believe that Rufus Shinra would actually not seize the opportunity to take a member of AVALANCHE hostage.

"I was actually hoping to spend some time by myself for awhile. But unfortunately, the brainless workers here apparently don't understand that when I give them 500 Gil and say I want a Gondola cart to myself, it means they aren't supposed to put anyone else in it."

"Boy, aren't I popular today." Tifa thought. Not that she cared what Rufus thought of her, or that she wanted to be around him either, but it was just one more incidence of having no one who wanted to hang out especially with her, added to her miserable evening.

"But now that we're both stuck here we might as well make the best of it don't you think?" he said with a sarcastic smile.

Tifa rolled her eyes and looked out the window.

Rufus chuckled again and also went back to staring out his window.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence Tifa began to feel as though tension would kill her. "I shouldn't be so worried about whether he's going to try to capture me or not. I'm stuck here either way…" Suddenly, Tifa felt a wave of curiosity hit her, similar to the one she had felt the night she had first heard his name. Rufus Shinra was sitting right across from her, with no guards in sight. She could ask him any questions she wanted, the most he could do was decline to answer.

"How can you sleep at night, knowing about all the people in the world who have to suffer because of you?"

Rufus turned back to her with an amused smile. "Why? Do you want to compare strategies or do you need some advice?"

"What?!" Tifa shouted in disbelief that he could somehow consider her on an equally low level as himself.

Her shocked response only increased the President's amusement. "Personally Miss Lockheart, I can't even hold a candle to your body count. You have no idea how many death notices have been piling up on my desk that I've had to put my seal on and send out to families in the past few weeks. I also have yet to be responsible for any sort of large scale massacre like you and your friends pulled off at Sector One."

Tifa was silent, it was the first time she had really stopped to think about the damage AVALANCHE's actions had caused and how they had affected countless numbers of people who weren't directly involved with Shinra's crimes. Every time they killed a soldier wearing a Shinra uniform they were also killing somebody's son, daughter, brother, sister or lover at the same time.

"What about burning Nibelheim, blowing up Gongaga, and destroying Sector Seven?" She snapped back, determined not to let him make her feel like she was the villain.

"I had nothing to do with any of those. Both Nibelheim and the incident at Sector Seven were foolish decisions made under my Old Man's administration. Old Man had confidence issues about public support, which is why all of his executives, that I am now stuck with, are annoyingly talented at attempting to kiss my ass and rather untalented at their actual jobs: commanding armies, building weapons, etc. " he paused to think for a moment "with the exception of Reeve, who is actually a decent architect. It's also why every time something dangerous to Shinra's image happened, like the incident at Nibelheim, he resorted to killing off everyone involved… I was extremely busy with my own affairs during the Nibelheim incident, and I wasn't even informed of Sector Seven until after it had happened. As far as Gongaga goes, that had not been planned and was merely an accident."

"What about destroying North Corel?"

A guilty smile crept over the President's face. "I'll admit I was directly involved in that one, but I had nothing to do with the decision to destroy it, as I happened to be one of the people down at the reactor causing problems; although the Company wasn't aware of it at the time.

Tifa gave the President a puzzled look, and when she saw he wasn't going to elaborate any further she decided not to push the subject. "So you would have done something different?" She asked skeptically.

Rufus nodded. "Completely rebuilding Nibelheim to look like it did before the fire and hiring actors to fill it with, in an attempt to 'cover up' our mistake, has proved to be a huge waste of time and money when we could have just apologized, extended our condolences and gave the town a couple thousand Gil to help with rebuilding. You certainly can't think that Shinra meant for its best SOLDIER to go insane and burn the town down… And concerning the destruction of Sector 7, that was an even bigger waste of money to fix a problem which could have easily been solved by sending the Turks out to pick through the slums until enough people had given away information on where exactly you were located, that the Turks could infiltrate and pick you all off as you slept. The thousands of people he killed in an attempt to crush six, in which he only succeeded in killing half; were all buying our electric. And since dead people don't use electricity, we are currently experiencing a rather detrimental loss in profits.

Tifa let out a snicker, not because the situation was anything to laugh about, it was far from it; but because Shinra was now having to suffer because of its actions.

"It is funny, isn't it? I laughed too when I got my Executive's Report from Midgar that week and it explained the incident at Sector 7 and then went on to complain about having to raise taxes, which would decrease public support, because of a 'significant drop in sales'. It isn't funny anymore, now that I have to suffer with the consequences of his actions, but it gave me a good laugh then… Now, to answer your original question: The common people and their troubles have no effect on the quality of my sleep; I sleep very well matter of fact. But if I ever were to have trouble sleeping, I would simply start to think about all the things I had to do when I got up the next day and all the excuses I was going to hear from my miserable executives, and I would get so tired that I would fall right asleep."

Tifa gave him an awkward smile. He had proved his slate was clean as far as the big crisis Shinra had caused in the past, but he had also proved he was far from a nice guy. He had absolutely no qualms about the suffering of others and only seemed to generally disagree with killing off large numbers of people because it meant he would lose money, rather than because it was morally wrong.

"So what are you doing hiding in this Gondola ride? As arrogant as you are, I'm surprised you'd be such a coward and disguise yourself so the common people don't recognize you."

Rufus raised an eyebrow. "I'm not a coward Miss Lockheart."

"You ran away from that battle with Cloud on top of the Shinra building."

"That was no battle, that was a piddly child's fight of "I hit you, you hit me" and it would have solved nothing. It was a waste of time and I had better things to do, like get the corpse that was lying on my desk removed. I actually regret not leaving the 'battle' sooner." He replied, with bitterness in his last statement, suddenly becoming colder."Shit, I said that out loud didn't I?" Rufus thought, realizing too late he had let some of his feelings slip through.

"Rufus Shinra is starting to say things that actually make sense?" Tifa thought, remembering how worried she had been about Cloud as she waited for him to come back from that fight. She had thought the fight between them had been pointless too. If Cloud had died, she and the rest of AVALANCHE would still be trying to save the Planet, and if Rufus had been killed, Shinra would still be trying to find the Promise Land.

"I must be more tired than I thought." Then she remembered his last comment, and began to feel puzzled.

"What does Rufus have to regret about not making his getaway sooner? Did Cloud give him a little scar somewhere on his perfect body that is damaging his inflated ego?" Scold herself as she might, even Tifa had to admit, that the President was one of the most good looking guys in Gaia, he just had a rotten personality to go along with his good looks.

Tifa watched as Rufus reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his PHS, suddenly his keys, which had decided to come along with the PHS, fell out of his pocket and onto the ground. As he bent down to pick them up, she noticed that attached to the key ring was a dog whistle. Tifa's eyes widened as she realized that the reason he regretted staying to fight as long as he did, could possibly be because he had lost his pet. She remembered Rufus stepping off of the helicopter that night with a Guard Hound she noticed had seemed particularly loyal to him. She also remembered Cloud saying that he had managed to kill off the Guard Hound, that the President had addressed as "Dark Nation", before he had made his escape.

After he had checked the time, Rufus returned his PHS to his pocket and directed his attention back to Tifa.

"But if you must know," He said, resuming his former sociable air. "I'm not taking this little break for me, I'm taking it for my Turks. The only reason I'm here because I happened to be in the copter with them when I decided they could have an hour of free time. Ever since Reno got out of the hospital, after that fight he had with you and the rest of your group on the Sector Seven Pillar, he's been overly energetic and has desperately needed to blow off some steam. And I think Tseng was really going to shoot him if he made that buzzing noise and stuck his finger in Tseng's ear one more time during that copter ride."

Tifa raised her eyebrows and tried hard not to laugh as she pictured the scene Rufus had described taking place. It seemed so out of character to imagine the Turks, who were normally thought of as serious, heartless assassins, goofing off in their helicopter.

"Unlike most of my other high-ranking employees, the Turks actually work hard, so I decided they could all have an hour of free time to get rid of some stress before they go back to work. Technically, Lockheart, since these happen to be clothes that I wear when I go to the gym, and this isn't some sort of wig," He said elegantly flipping his hair that instead of being neatly gelled back into its usual position, now hung loosely across his eyes. "it's just the way my hair naturally behaves; I'm not really in disguise, as you were saying. I'm just not dressed for work. You are right though, I normally wouldn't bother with changing my clothes. But if Dio were to find out I was here, he would instantly come find me and invite me to his Show Room, and then I would have to listen to the same spiel, about the same artifacts, and be forced to admire his muscles that look the same size, even though he's 'drastically changed' his workout routine and diet. And if I have to hear all that one more time, I think I might go mad."

Tifa found herself biting her lip to holding back laughter again. She had encountered Dio before, and knew how proud he was of his Show Room, and also that he could talk for a looong time. "You go to the Gold Saucer a lot, then?"

"I haven't been here recently, but when I was Vice President I was sent here quite often for business reasons; this is a Shinra run theme park you know. "

"So where are your Turks? I haven't seen them."

Rufus reclined back into his seat. "Tseng is probably snoozing in the middle of that ridiculous play he went to see with Elena. And Reno is probably blowing off his paycheck at the Chocobo Races or the arcade, with Rude."

Tifa nodded. "I wonder if anyone else from my side has noticed that the Shinra are here…"

"I see that your knight in shining armor has once again slighted you in favor of his damsel in distress." Rufus said, nodding in the direction of the loading station.

Tifa looked and sure enough, Cloud and Aeris were getting on board a Gondola cart together. Tifa sighed.

"You should really set your standards a little higher Lockheart, you can do better than Strife. You make it quite obvious that you have feelings for him, and he barely has the intelligence to acknowledge your existence."

Tifa frowned, "It's obvious to other people that I have feelings for Cloud?", Maybe he was right, part of what he said had made sense, that was, until Tifa remembered that Rufus was the one who had said it.

"You have no right to assume anything about me you asshole. There is nothing going on between me and Cloud and I do not feel the least bit slighted about him spending time with Aeris." She snapped, realizing too late how defensive she had sounded.

Rufus chuckled. "And I'm not really the President of Shinra, I'm just a custodian."

"I suppose setting my standards higher would mean going after some arrogant prick like you."

"That's not what I was inferring, but if that's how you want to feel about it I'm not going to argue with you." He said with a teasing smile.

"That bastard, trying to twist my statement like that. I'm starting to wonder if there is one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

Rufus laughed and flipped his hair out of the way again. "Relax Lockheart. You think the people in AVALANCHE are the only ones with love problems? Try, Rude-is-in-love-" he paused. "-with-a-member-of-AVALANCHE, but-sort-of-likes-Elena-who-sort-of-likes-him-back-but-is-also-in-love-with-Tseng-who-sort-of-likes-her-back-but-is-also-in-love-with-the-Ancient, and see what sort of drama you have to hear about every day."

Tifa blinked, it was just one more surprise added to her recent discoveries in the last few minutes about Rufus and his Turks. "Well that definitely makes me feel better." Tifa thought, grateful to be caught in AVALANCHE's simple little love triangle rather than the complex love labyrinth the Turks seemed to be tangled in, and also grateful to know that she wasn't the only one who was confused about her love life.

"HEY BOSS-MAN!" a voice suddenly shouted from the direction of the roller coaster. Rufus casually looked out towards the coaster, which happened to be reasonably close to their Gondola cart, with a "what now?" expression. Tifa also turned toward the direction of the voice to find Reno and Rude, whom she almost didn't recognize in their civilian clothes, slowly nearing the top of coaster's first big hill. Reno was waving exaggeratedly in the general direction of the Gondola carts, not knowing exactly which one the President was in, but knowing that wherever Rufus was, he was the only one who would hear and know that the phrase "boss-man" was directed at him and know exactly who had addressed him. As the coaster car began its sudden, fast descent down the hill, the red-headed Turk let out a high-pitched scream and desperately hugged his coworker, more out of the desire to make a scene and be an annoyance to Rude, who was having enough trouble keeping a hold of his sunglasses without Reno's interference; than out of actual fear.

Tifa began to giggle and looked toward Rufus who, still facing the coaster, let out a sigh and rolled his eyes.

"What an embarrassment." He said with a slightly amused smile before turning to face Tifa, who was now giggling even harder. To Tifa's surprise the President also started to laugh. But as soon as he had started, a loud 'BANG!' startled both of them and caused them to immediately direct their gazes out the window of the cart. The fireworks had begun.

Had that been a genuine laugh she had just heard from him? She wanted to think that it was. It hadn't emitted the same feel as his usual laugh, which she had heard many times before.

It was odd. Here she was, sitting in a Gondola cart, watching fireworks with her worst enemy. Not only that but she was actually almost, dare she say it, enjoying herself. The conversation she had been having with Rufus was interesting to say the least and she was beginning to notice how different Rufus was from the other Shinra executives. She couldn't possibly imagine having this situation play out the same way with Rufus' father, Heidegger or Scarlet.

"I've never seen such beautiful fireworks." Tifa said, gazing out the window in amazement.

Rufus chuckled. "The fireworks on Enchantment Night aren't bad. The ones on New Year's are better though."

His unenthusiastic comment did little to dampen Tifa's excitement, as she continued to watch the exploding colors outside.

"…You know something Miss Lockheart?" Rufus said, turning to Tifa after a little while longer of watching the fireworks in silence. "You happen to be the most intelligent, talented and attractive woman I know. "

Tifa froze. Was he coming on to her? She turned to face him. He had a devious smirk on his face and Tifa could see he was enjoying every moment of her confusion and couldn't wait to see how she would respond.

"What would make you want to tell me that?" She asked suspiciously, keeping her cool in an attempt to deny him the pleasure of making her feel uncomfortable. "You can't be expecting me to be suddenly swept off my feet?"

He let out an amused laugh. "That would be quite a foolish expectation, wouldn't it? Seeing as I have no emotional investment, in how you feel in return, I made that comment merely because I think you deserve to hear it; if not from your 'hero', then from your enemy... Don't misunderstand though; my personal feelings for you have no effect on how I treat you professionally. When this break is over in about -" He pulled out his PHS again to look at the time. "-15 minutes, it's back to business; and that little compliment of mine will cease to have any meaning whatsoever. "

It wasn't the response Tifa had been expecting to hear. She had been complimented by countless numbers of men before, most of which had simply been hoping to 'get something' out of it, but none had ever complimented her because she 'deserved' it. In fact, now that she thought about it, few had even accompanied the word 'attractive', or one of its various synonyms, with other adjectives like 'intelligent' and 'talented'.

"Would it surprise you to learn that complimenting deserving people is a common practice of mine? It's something I even try to incorporate into my work. Unfortunately, there often seems to be a severe lack of people who are deserving of my compliments."

Tifa snorted. "And what may I ask grants me this special status of being 'deserving' of your gracious compliments?"

"Out of all of the members of AVALANCHE, I've always thought you to be the most civilized and agreeable, a theory of mine you've proved correct during this little conversation we've been having. And in addition to that, you aren't afraid to look me in the eyes and challenge me; but you somehow manage to do so in a way that I find intriguing and, exciting even, rather than rebellious and irritating."

He was being serious, Tifa suddenly realized. There was no reason for him to compliment her and lie about it, especially since he had just got done telling her that he wasn't interested in how she felt about him, and that any feelings he had for her for her personally became completely obsolete as soon as he stepped back into the position of 'President of the Shinra Company'.

All Tifa could do was give him a nervous smile. She had to admit it made her feel good about herself, especially tonight, when everyone seemed to have someone else they'd rather be with than her; to have someone give her a genuine compliment, even if that someone happened to be Rufus Shinra.

"Thanks, I guess." She finally responded shyly.

Rufus raised an eyebrow, baffled by her sudden change in temperament, but before he could inquire as to what had caused the change, the gate of the Gondola cart opened and a Gold Saucer worker signaled for them to step out.

Tifa got out of the cart and walked toward the exit, glancing behind her she was somewhat surprised to see Rufus following her.

"You're getting off now, too?" She asked, stopping and waiting for him to catch up to her.

"Yes, it's almost time for me to get back to work and besides, if they stuck you in that cart with me the first time, I don't want to find out who they would put in there with me next."

Tifa dropped her jaw in offense. "I thought I was beautiful, talented and intelligent?"

Rufus chuckled. "You are Miss Lockheart; and I find your company to be very entertaining… It's too bad, if you weren't such a terrorist, I would invite you to have dinner with me sometime."

Before Tifa had a chance to respond, Rufus grabbed her hand and gave it a gentleman-like kiss before flashing her a dashing farewell smirk and heading towards the Central Station.

Tifa stood there by the exit to the Gondola ride shocked and a little embarrassed, with her heart racing 100 miles-per-minute. Subconsciously she grabbed the hand he had kissed and began to rub it with her other one, still able to feel where his lips had touched her skin. "…and if you weren't the President of Shinra," She thought to herself with a smile. "I just might have accepted."

In that short amount of time Rufus had somehow managed to un-demonize himself and the Turks. And for the first time Tifa could see that the Turks weren't just cold, ruthless, order-obeying assassins. They were people who annoyed each other, had problems with their love lives and needed to get out and have fun every once in awhile; and that Rufus Shinra wasn't a book that could be easily read by its cover. From looking at him and observing his actions in public, a person had absolutely no way of knowing that behind those cold, icy blue eyes and expensive 3-piece suit was a person, who sometimes felt overloaded at work, let his Turks take an occasional break from their job, secretly cared for his pet, and thought that she, Tifa Lockheart, was not only attractive, but talented and intelligent as well.

Not five minutes after she had returned to the hotel, Cloud and Aeris came rushing back with the news that Cait Sith had been a spy all along and had given the Keystone to Tseng and the other Turks, who had escaped by helicopter; and Tifa was brought back to the reality that her encounter with Rufus had changed nothing regarding the relationship between the Shinra Company and AVALANCHE. Shinra was still killing the Planet with Mako energy and its employees were still as heartless, greedy and relentless in their pursuit for the Promise Land as they had been earlier that day and would stop at nothing to make sure that they got there before AVALANCHE did. Along with the rest of her friends, Tifa was hurt and angry that someone she trusted had betrayed her, but she couldn't help but crack a small smile when no one was looking, as she realized just how serious Rufus had been when he had said that the Turks would be going back to work after their one-hour break.

Tifa now realized why Rufus made such a sharp distinction between his personal and professional feelings. If you looked objectively at the situation, AVALANCHE and Shinra were the exactly the same: both were fighting for what they felt was right and both were willing to do whatever it would take to achieve their goals. It would be hard to fight for your side if the lines between "good" and "evil" became grey instead of black and white; and Tifa knew that she was going to have to do the same with her own feelings, as Rufus did with his. She decided to store her new-found knowledge about Rufus and the Turks in the back of her mind for safekeeping. And secretly, she hoped that someday Shinra and AVALANCHE wouldn't have to fight anymore, and that she would be able to meet Rufus again, as Rufus, instead of as Shinra's President. He had, more or less, invited her to dinner after all, and there was still so much more about him that she wanted to know.

More Notes:

~ Rude and Elena sort-of having feelings for each other comes from the scene in Gongaga where Reno asks Rude who he likes. Rude says "…Tifa", and then Reno says something like: "That's a tough one. But poor Elena…she…you" (leading one to infer that there was some sort of relationship going on between Elena and Rude, or they at least had a crush on each other, at one point) I think that gets overshadowed a lot by the 'Rude likes Tifa' part, so I figured I'd point that out in case someone was wondering where the hell I came up with Rude liking Elena. XD

~ The idea of Rufus complementing deserving people comes from this one random sailor that you can talk to when you first visit Costa del Sol, who is happy and excited that President Rufus complimented him on his work. I thought it was interesting that Rufus, being as arrogant and busy as he is, would take the time to even notice that some insignificant sailor was doing a good job at something and actually make the effort to complement him for it.

~ Read the translation of Before Crisis if you don't know what Rufus was up to during the attack on North Corel

Despite the lack of a very original setting, I hope you enjoyed reading this silly little one-shot of mine nonetheless and uh, too bad so sad… I guess, if you didn't. XD

Reviews please! ^^