Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all names, characters, and related indicia are property of Square-Enix.

white flag

She gave up today. She doesn't like to think of it like that, but maybe that's what it really was.

She liked to think that she tried to save him, but she knows now that it was impossible to save someone so utterly broken. She climbed out of the Lifestream with him, fought and lived and bled with him, and now he's gone. Oh, he's still alive, but now she can only see flashes and bits and pieces of the boy she knew that's now a man but not really, just half-man and half-boy, a collage of contradictions. So she left. He'll have his ghosts to talk to, so she doesn't think he'll be lonely.

She left and traveled, walked and ran and rode across roads she had seen a million times before, and now she's made it a million-and-one. She talked to herself not because she was crazy, but because it just made sense to talk to herself. She never really bothered, not before. She spent a lot of time learning things about who she was, not about him, because it's always been about him, him or her, but she's dead so she can't be blamed. And she thought a long time ago that she might feel bad about thinking like that, but when she finally started to, she decided it wasn't really bad at all. Some part of her thinks she might've given up on him, thrown up the white flag and admitted defeat, but she didn't. When she was working to fix him, somewhere along the line she gave up on herself, and that's really not any way to live at all, is it? Some people might say that she gave up on her too, but she didn't do that either.

The thing is, she knows she's dead, she's not coming back, and he can't see beyond that; he's too caught up in what she was, and not what she is now, which is nothing at all, just a memory. She feels sorry for him, but she's spent a lot of time feeling sorry for him through the years, sorry she lied, sorry he got hurt, sorry he didn't make SOLDIER, and sorry she died and left him alone. But he forgot that she was still around, that she was the one that fed him and patted his head and told him everything was going to be alright, that pulled him out of Lifestream and fought and lived and bled with him. But she hasn't forgotten. She remembers everything.

The day she left he got them both mixed up; he thought she was going again, but she wasn't, she's dead, why can't he get that, it was just her, the one who saved him and fed him, and why can't he understand she loved him too? As much as the other, and maybe more, because she made him whole again, but he forgot that too, and that's why he's broken again now. She can't fix him, and even if she could, she wouldn't. She's not sure he deserves it anyway. She can't do all the work.

So maybe she's given up, maybe she's pulled up that white flag and admitted defeat. Maybe that's what you think, or maybe that's what he thinks or they think, but she knows better. She's just doing something she hasn't done for years, and that's fixing herself. She's not a bad person for leaving, she tells herself, she's just a woman who's tired of trying to live up to something that's dead and gone. And really, that's not bad at all. She doesn't hate her, but she hates that impossible legacy she left behind. She can't live up to that.

And you know what? She's decided she doesn't want to, not anymore, and that's just fine.

end

A/N: I think Tifa has it bad, both in the game and in the fandom. Either she's loathed universally (and that's too bad) or she gets turned into something she isn't: a weak, depressed woman. I don't like to think she's really like that. I see a lot of stories where Cloud leaves her to find Aeris, and I don't think it would play out like that. She's a tough girl. I think she'd leave. It's basically a stream of disjointed thought, so I apologize if anyone gets lost.