A/N: I had thought about this scenario for a while, and felt it wasn't very realistic considering...everything. I've only used the OG and the Ultimania 10th Anniversary timeline, and Delightful kelleyj17 thinks I should cover the time between now and the Bombing Mission. I might do that, but it's not going to be sweet and romantic. It will be a bit about two strangers developing a friendship, though.
It was a little chilly in the slums this morning by Tifa's reckoning, even if it was early October. She was glad she had purchased the heavy red sweater she had covering her chest, the denim of her jeans also doing their part to keep her warm. Her feet plodded through the trash-strewn road of Sector Seven's slums, occasionally hitting pavement that hadn't been covered by accumulating dirt from the windstorms of the Midgar Wastes. It was an almost eternal twilight down here, the yellow and blue lights hanging from above the brightest source of illumination that cast dangerous shadows when she passed an alley. The thin white lights of the main pillar and plates shined far away and above, like dingy stars on a rust colored sky.
She hadn't seen the real sky in all its glory in five years.
It was permanently blocked out by the giant metal plates above her. Even when Tifa had ventured near the edge of a slum, there it was, hiding most of the firmament. Not that she could have seen the stars at night, of course; the greenish smog that came out of the reactor base billowed up and clouded the view. It would pool about the ground after a while, but there was always more to cloud the air surrounding the pillars.
Of course the toxic exhaust was funneled down into the slums and not allowed to pour out upon the plate like a fog of madness and mutation. People paid good money to live up there and chance the sun or even a star or two on a very clear night at the edge of the plate. So, the waste gas was mostly pumped down into the slums, or so Tifa had been told by residents. She believed it, because this was Shinra and they cared very little about human life a continent over, let alone under their shadow.
Tifa had heard of people growing deranged if they were exposed to too much of it, and rumors of even worse effects if one had the misfortune of either falling into a puddle of runoff or having it spill down on a victim. Citizens gave the reactor bases a wide berth because of the risks involved, let alone the strange sentinels that could be seen patrolling the grounds. Their twitchy movements had given her nightmares the first time she laid eyes on them, and she was glad they never strayed beyond the fence enclosure.
They looked so human, but not.
She crunched through a small mound of paper refuse, towards the train station and back to Seventh Heaven. Her checkup at the clinic had been like the last, nothing unusual to report. Her scar still tingled or hurt from time to time, but the doctor said that wasn't out of the ordinary considering the depth of the injury, even five years later. Tifa made a follow up appointment and was reminded that Marlene was supposed to visit in two weeks.
But her mind was elsewhere. Barret had been talking more and more about getting revenge on Shinra, and while she was slow to warm on the idea(take down the de facto world power?), it opened old wounds for her. Maybe they couldn't take down Shinra, but they could make them hurt. They could give them scars, too. It was true that the reactors were sucking up the lifeblood of the Planet, and perhaps if they could knock out a few it would inspire others around the world to take up arms.
Tifa knew it was a longshot, but it could lead to a better world. Wouldn't it? If they did nothing the world would die regardless. Marlene would have nothing. But if they died in this fight, Marlene would have nothing anyway. An orphan that became an orphan once more, because she and Barret got themselves killed or worse in a fight for the Planet. Because that's what it was, a fight to keep the Planet alive.
She let out an anxious sigh. They needed more than just Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, if they even decided to entertain the idea. They lived in the area underneath Seventh Heaven with Barret, Marlene and her; they were in a similar boat as them because of Shinra, and how could Tifa and Barret not feel pity for them? The slums weren't safe, but there was safety in numbers.
Jessie had come from Sector Two's slums after falling out with a Turk-influenced mob boss. She came to the bar looking battered and ordered a whiskey with her last bit of gil. Tifa remembered Jessie saying it was her way of celebrating her new life in a new slum, and the young bartender asked what her new life was. "I don't know" was the hesitant, whispered answer. Tifa had taken her in after the bar closed. Jessie knew her way around computers and gadgets, and paid her way through repair work, either within the bar or by being hired by slum residents.
It hadn't been without hiccups in the first few months, of course. Jessie would hide herself away downstairs if she saw a too familiar face prowling the slums or entering the bar, knowing they were looking for her. They would sometimes go up to Tifa and ask about the brunette that had been seen at the counter, and she would give a fake name and her harshest booze just to keep them from visiting again. Eventually they stopped coming, either deciding Jessie was not there or not worth the trouble.
It wasn't as if she stole anything too important.
Biggs was more of a mystery. He had never spoken much about where he came from or what he had done before joining the bar, and that had been a point of contention between him and Barret. Barret didn't, and still did not like mysterious people that just appeared out of the blue. After his third time in the bar, Tifa and Jessie coaxed something out of him, and it was enough: Something happened to his mother and sister, and it involved Shinra. They let him stay as a bouncer.
Wedge had the effect of lightening the mood when he finally made it to Seventh Heaven. For someone who grew up in these slums he came off as rather idealistic and cheerful. He claimed his family lived in a sector close by and he was just looking for work, but Tifa could tell he was looking for friends. He had a loneliness in his eyes that must have matched hers when she awoke to the sterile looking clinic she had been taken to five years ago.
It turned out he was the last of his family after a purge in the slums beneath Sector Eight destroyed his neighborhood. He survived because he went out to buy a few snacks at a shop. Wedge migrated to Sector Seven's slums, never wanting to set foot in that slice of Midgar's shadow again. How he stayed so cheerful, Tifa never knew. Maybe it really was her cooking, as he claimed.
The smell of coal exhaust became stronger as she approached the train station. A train was slowly beginning its trek back towards the central pillar and up towards the plate above, where some slum residents worked in shops or hustled crafts for extra gil. Tifa made a passing glance at the departing train, then down at the pavement below the train platform.
The train attendant was hovering over some wretch leaning on the platform wall as a dog barked at them both.
That wasn't anything particularly unsual in the slums. Drunks or the very ill or disabled crawled about the place. If they were lucky, they weren't eaten by monsters or used by criminals for whatever nefarious reason. But what caught her eye and made her tense was the gigantic sword by that man's side; she could have sworn she had seen that sword a long time ago.
Tifa paused to watch, fidgeting on her feet in case she had to move quickly. She was only fifteen feet away, and what if that man suddenly leapt up and began to attack in a fit of psychosis? She had seen it before, and it almost always ended with death or deformity to the fool who thought to be kind. The train attendant seemed nonplussed, and put a hand on the slovenly wretch's metal pauldron.
"Poor guy. Hey, did you have a place you were trying to get to?"
The wretch drooled as his mouth opened to respond. He let out a low groan.
Tifa studied the stranger some more, the sickly yellow glow of a street lamp helping her see him in more detail than the twilight would have provided. His hair was matted with what she hoped was mud, and it looked like his clothes were much the same. She frowned; a few blond tufts poked out from the crusty dirt. Coming a little closer while still on alert, she noticed he was wearing a Soldier uniform.
This was one of Shinra's elite goons.
She didn't know everything there was to know about Soldier, except that they were superhumans created by some secret process. Soldier was created to serve as the elite fighting force of Shinra against all enemies; even if this mumbling druggard wasn't aware of it, they were on opposite ends of an unofficial war. The hatred she felt five years ago had never faded, it was only placed on the back burner of her life.
She went to leave again, but that sword bothered her, and she turned to stare at it. Did other Soldiers have it, or only Zack? She had only met two, he and that madman Sephiroth. She never knew what happened to Zack, and despite her feelings towards Shinra he hadn't seemed like a bad person. If he had survived, she wondered if he had quit the military after the Incident. She couldn't remember much after Sephiroth cut her down.
Tifa bit her lip and chewed on it as the collapsed Soldier twitched a leg after the train attendant shook his shoulder gently. She felt that she needed to know who he was, why he had that particular sword. He hadn't tried to kill the fellow manhandling him, so she supposed she could get close enough to study the sword.
Tifa inched a little closer, towards the giant sword while still giving the stranger a wide berth. The wretch would twitch or seize up, or groan and grunt, but never made a move to attack. She was reminded of one of Jessie's computers as it crashed and rebooted in a loop, trying to get some foothold on the system it existed within. His head was down but she made out his sharp nose and the glimmer of an azure glow from his half open eyes.
"Friend of yours?" the attendant asked hopefully.
She shook her head. "I...don't know." Tifa bent down slowly, always watching for the stranger to still and tense, but he continued his gurgled grunts into his lap. He ignored her, the attendant, the yapping dog. Nothing seemed to matter to him.
"Se...—oth. Re...un...on." The voice sounded harsh, as if he hadn't spoken in a very long time. "Urk."
Her fingers very gingerly traced the sword's edge, and her eyes studied the rust and filth spackled metal while occasionally watching the owner. This was not Zack, but this had to be his sword, unless it was standard issue for Soldiers. Her hand withdrew from the weapon, and she looked at the Soldier again.
She couldn't see much, with his matted hair covering most of his face as he stared into his lap. He shuddered an inhale, held it in, then leaked out an exhale. Tifa felt she should hate him, for everything he could and probably had done, but he was terribly pathetic at the moment. She bent her head down cautiously to get a better look at his face.
He looked vaguely familiar.
Despite the filth she could make out angled features and the eyes...They seemed to look through her, studying her back despite him obviously not being at all there. She shivered; mako eyes were terribly inhuman. Tifa dared to touch his sunken in cheek, and watched as those eyes widened and immediately became even more alien than they had been a moment ago. Then it was gone in a flash.
"What..." he scratched out. He groaned again, and squeezed his eyes shut to Tifa's relief. "I...Where..." His voice had steadied from last he mumbled.
She blinked in rapid succession; that was a deep and rough voice with the slightest of accents from the other continent, not dissimilar to her own despite attempts at hiding it completely under the Midgar dialect. Tifa looked back up and touched a tuft of filthy hair. God, she hoped that was just mud. He smelled horrible. She took note that where the hair wasn't matted, it came together into clumps that formed disheaveled spikes. There was only one person she knew with hair like that.
She suddenly remembered the promise under the stars, on the well in the middle of the village. The boy who said he would join Soldier. The neighbor that barely talked and always fought the other kids, but never approached her but that once. The one who she caught watching her as she played the piano in her room. Could it really be him?
"Cloud? Is that...you?"
Tifa yanked her hand away and took a few steps back as the Soldier shook his head like a wet dog. The attendant also backed away, in case the stranger was growing violent. The Soldier looked around, as if taking in the world for the very first time, then looked up at Tifa with those freakishly blue eyes. Something akin to a smile appeared on his face, and she winced.
"That's right, I'm Cloud!" he exclaimed with a nod. He slowly stood up and stretched his back, pops and crunches eminating from his spine. Cloud put his hands on his hips with a cocky posture. It reminded her of Zack more than the Cloud she remembered. It had been a very long time, she thought, so perhaps he had changed a bit during his employment with Shinra.
The thought put a damper on this strange reunion with her old neighbor. Did he know what happened? Before she could respond he looked her up and down, then tilted his head to the side. "Tifa?" He straightened his neck, and a look of relief crossed his filthy face. "Tifa! It's you!"
The train attendant looked between them, nodded, and walked away.
Her hand came up to her slightly parted mouth; he remembered her. He sounded absolutely ecstatic to see her, too. "Y-yeah...It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Five years."
Confusion and unease pooled in her stomach. It had been seven years, not five. "Actually—"
"I thought you were a goner," he interrupted quietly, his glowing eyes looking down at the pavement. "You lost so much blood..."
Her breath caught in her throat. How did he know? He wasn't at Nibelheim. Did Zack tell him? But he sounded like he was recalling the Incident. "N-no, I escaped." She swallowed hard while sizing him up. He looked emaciated. "What happened to you?"
Cloud shrugged and dropped his hands from his hips. "I quit Shinra after Nibelheim burned." He paused, and his eyes did something, glimmer or the pupils contracted in a wrong shape, but Tifa wondered if it was just a visual trick from the mako glow. "I became a mercenary."
A mercenary. Tifa let out her breath and shifted on her feet. "I, uh...I guess you had a bad job recently."
He frowned as he looked down at himself, and his shoulders twitched ever so slightly before he looked back up and shrugged. "Got ambushed by a lot of soldiers," he said flatly.
"I see."
He very obviously hadn't been eating very well at all; but he looked uninjured at least, just filthy. She wondered if Soldiers really did have incredible healing abilities like the rumors said. Tifa bit the inside of her cheek. What about Zack? "Um, Cloud? Do you remember a Soldier named Zack?"
That seemed to set him off somehow, or maybe it was just a coincidence. He dropped to his knees and held his head, his body seizing up and causing him to shudder erratically. Tifa put a hand on his shoulder and bent down next to him. "Cloud!"
He calmed down at her touch and took very harsh, heavy breaths. He turned his head to look at her, and he looked as if nothing happened at all. "Mm?"
She pursed her lips. "I think you need to see a doctor, Cloud. There's a clinic over—"
"No," he whispered. "No doctors."
"I mean, she's probably not a real doctor but she does her best," she tried to assure him.
He shook his head. "Please. I don't want to see a doctor." There was disgust and desperation tinging his voice. "I just need to rest a bit before I take off again."
She looked at him incredulously. Where was he going to go off to? He looked like he was completely down on his luck despite the cocky facade. What was more, she couldn't let this small bit of her past before Sephiroth took everything leave again, not when she had so many questions! "How about you clean up at my place, okay?"
"I...um..." He looked down at his dirty arms and boots, then back at her with a nod. "Lead the way."
It had felt like the right thing to do at the time, and Tifa still felt it was. But as to it being a good idea, she decided that perhaps she should have thought things through a little more after somehow getting Cloud to the bar. He was weak and had been dragging his sword through the filthy streets while still trying to keep that cocky posture of his. When they had made it to Seventh Heaven he had asked how she had come to own her very own bar.
She replied that the owner had been murdered two years ago when he went to travel to Wall Market. By who, she didn't know. Shinra, gangsters, a slag hopped up on drugs. It didn't matter anymore, because she claimed it when news of his death reached her. Barret made sure the decision to own the makeshift bar was enforced.
After helping him into the bathroom downstairs and giving him a bag to throw away his underwear she made up the tiny guest room that was little more than a modified utility closet before throwing his uniform in the washer. He insisted on keeping it because he said he earned it. She would have rather burned them, but it was his descision.
She had wondered where he acquired that hideous scar on his chest. He really must be a mercenary, after all.
Now, as he lay sleeping on the rickety bed in a pair of Biggs' boxers, she had to deal with Barret upstairs before the bar opened.
The big, dark skinned man put his good hand and his covered stump on the wooden counter, his dark eyes staring at her in disbelief. "You brought home a what?"
"He's not employed by Shinra anymore, Barret." Tifa crossed her arms and stared right back at him. Her eyes glanced Marlene as she sat on a stool eating a snack, sheepishly watching her adoptive parents. Tifa tightened her jaw, then looked back at Barret. The sound of boiling chicken bones punctuated the silence.
Barret motioned his hand towards the pinball machine that covered the entrance to the living area. "You don't know if he's tellin' the truth or not! Once a Shinra rat, always a Shinra rat!"
Tifa shook her head. "No," she said quietly, softly. Her eyes drifted downward towards her feet. Cloud knew how she had almost died, somehow. He said he had quit Shinra after the Nibelheim Incident, but why keep the uniform? What did he go through that made him protective of it? But Shinra wouldn't know of their possible plans to create a resistance group. Only she and Barret had spoken of it late at night and in hushed whispers.
She looked back up at Barret. "He...he was there."
"Where?" he interrogated with a raised brow.
"...At the Nibelheim Incident."
He brought his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. "You never said nothin' 'bout a guy named Cloud!"
Tifa played with a strand of her hair. "My memory was a little...hazy, during and after the fire, on account of my injuries. But, he remembers seeing me."
Barret brought his fist and stump back down on the counter, and he leaned in close. "He coulda been part of a clean up crew," he growled.
She hadn't thought of that. But he had seen her! What if he had passed her on to Zangan? Zangan's name was on that clinic tab when she left for a dark world so different from the one she grew up in. What about Cloud's mother? He had to care, deep down if he left. She puffed out her chest. "I doubt he would cooperate if he had to clean up his hometown's ashes."
Barret's face scrunched up into a frown, but she continued. "We were childhood friends," she lied. "I know that if they were stupid enough to make him go out to the ruins, he probably deserted soon after arriving."
"You said he was Soldier?" Barret pulled himself up to look down at Tifa again. "Y'sure he isn't gonna go batshit crazy?"
She was pretty sure he already was, but he wasn't violent crazy, thank Odin. "He hasn't done anything threatening towards me." Tifa looked around, then leaned in close. "Barret, he said he's a mercenary. We could hire him if we go through with this resistance we were thinking about!"
A thoughtful look crossed his face, and he rubbed his chin. A Soldier would give them a lot of man power if they decided to get dirty. "What's he good at, 'sides fightin'?"
Tifa shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, I'll ask him after the bar closes for the night. He could be a great physical asset, he might even have some information on Shinra."
He looked at Marlene, then at Tifa. "If he lays a god damn finger on Marlene..."
"I'll snap his neck myself," she finished.
That seemed to appease Barret, for now at least. "You best keep an eye on him an' make sure he's not doin' anything that could get us killed." He picked up Marlene as she finished her snack, then walked towards the pinball machine. "I'll ask Jessie to watch his ass when she gets back from where ever she went."
"Please don't shoot him," Tifa pleaded. Barret didn't wear his gun arm in the bar most of the time.
Barret looked back and scoffed. "So long as he don't do nothin' that deserves a bullet." He pressed a button on the side and bottom of the machine, and it sunk down with the two ferried on it.
Tifa huffed a sigh as she turned back to the stock she was creating, stirring it and watching as the bones slowly dissolved into the liquid. She would have to give some to Cloud, perhaps in a rice porridge so he could get back on his feet quicker. She remembered that he wanted to take off again, and as they talked on their way back to the bar she had asked where.
He wanted to see what was on North Continent, he had said.
She shook her head. No, she would convince him to stay here. She had to.