We could have been famous
Enough dirt on us both
To almost seem like glitter

ooo

She had never imagined herself as the type of girl to be clinging to the back of some boy's motorcycle, so speeding across broken highways on one was more than a little strange.

This other Elena, the one held tightly to Tifa's waist as they went so fast that the city streets still seemed like they used to be, was an Elena that she was starting to like. She'd ditched the tie (what were they going to do, demote her to less than nothing?) and unbuttoned a few buttons on her shirt so that the wind didn't just get in her hair. It tingled.

That dark-haired Elena had pulled the gil to pay them from a strategically placed garter, and Tifa had dismissed the gawking males in the room with barely a glance. She'd been a singer, she'd said. They both had been, her and Theresa, singers and beautiful people (everyone always knew who the beautiful people were).

Where they were heading wasn't just another broken down place. It was a broken down place that had once been something magnificent.

The signs (no, she didn't want to buy anything) and the posters (what the heck had that stupid play been about anyway) made a perverse red carpet for Tifa to pull up to.

If there had been cameras, they'd have looked a mess, because cool as a motorcycle was it was murder to hairstyles. Of course, Tifa just pulled out the almost useless hairtie and shook all that dark hair out like slum royalty, ready for dancing--hostile or otherwise.

"I never did go to the theater..." she muttered, kicking the stand for the cycle and dismounting. Elena followed, likely looking like a dandelion, judging by the bits of hair that haloed her vision.

"It's overrated anyway. Just a lot of people spouting bad poetry and Plate brats dressed up with nowhere better to go."

"Oh. Well."

Of course, that's not at all what she'd thought at first about the lights and the way that the theater house seemed to swallow her whole and never want to give her back again.

ooo

The lights of Midgar had been the brightest she'd ever seen and the Academy certainly wasn't low on power. She'd come there at night the first time, and she'd been expecting darkness (anyone that was anything and had been there said that the shadow hung throughout the daytime) but at night it was decadent with light.

She'd still been small then, in the car with her father and sister, but while Anna looked at Shinra Tower like it meant something she'd just been distracted by the glitter of it, like that expensive sort of materia that was only for the guns she wasn't allowed to touch yet.

Make a wish on a star, but if that doesn't work, wish on the lights of Midgar.

ooo

"You think anyone would live here? Especially this part of town?"

"People used to live in cardboard boxes when there was a city, can't imagine it'd be any different now."

The last place Theresa had been was this theater, the other Elena had said in a way that suggested this was a regular thing before Midgar had been given up to atone to the Planet. Tifa moved through the decay like she was used to it, and she had to be. Elena only ever came below the Plate on missions, and even then she was something Other (oh crap, it's a suit, everyone scatter).

She could find the pulse of old Midgar in that sway.

"I think the stage is this way," she said, dark hair parting in such a way to make it seem like an invitation.

The only times Elena had ever been near even the idea of a stage was to be singled out; the rookie, the captive, the example. It settled badly in her stomach (you can't look scared, it only brings out the predators) so she would hang around the wings. She fit better there anyway, bad jokes about shadows in the night notwithstanding. Rude and Reno used to practically bend her ear over it.

Tifa was right, as they made it into the dust and cobwebs, little shufflings of the vagrants that huddled under seats and on balconies. Of course Tifa was right. Elena remembered the file, remembered that her and the boy wonder were country kids, small town sorts. But that had been shed as glamour of the theater had been shed in the great purge. Even in ruins, the city changed people. Integrated into the slums, Tifa would always know.

Maybe it was because she hadn't come from such humble beginnings that Elena hadn't been changed for the better.

"I wish I had a light," Tifa murmured more than spoke. Elena was at her elbow in an instant, producing her small keychain flashlight.

One sad guitar on a lone chair on an empty stage. Someone had made a game for them.

ooo

That I would dance alone
With you and the golden light
Of a thousand people watching

ooo

"Someone's got a sense of humor." Tifa traced smiley faces and rainbows and flowers, the things that covered the guitar in such a way that made it seem more like a message than an oversight. Elena didn't think the joke was particularly funny.

"Do you really think this Theresa is really missing? Or is someone trying to mess with us?"

Tifa obviously wasn't a Midgar native by her lack of doubt with some things. Elena wasn't really either, but it had been drilled into her head by chiefs and mentors that the city was really all they had. Shinra was just the heart of it (and somewhat empty at that). She almost looked scandalized by the suggestion. But she quickly softened.

"What matters is that Elena thinks she's missing."

They were out the back exit of the theatre before the real creeps came in. There was quite a variation in the creeps nowadays, after the whole Geostigma epidemic. In a way it was comforting; the homogeny of slit-eyes and their ways of gathering in the strangest of places (tie the man first, the girl won't be as much of a problem).

"Are you still there, Elena?"

She stopped thinking about that. Nothing good would come of going there.

"I'm here. At least we found some kind of clue. Even if it's a weird one."

Tifa was getting the dreamy expression that must have been more common to her when she was younger. Elena didn't want to stare, and she had always thought the preoccupation with innocence was more of male problem (the boss always liked her more, even if that was a charade), but she was starting to think it was an age one. At the beginning she had been preoccupied with experience after all. It had taken one afternoon to change all that.

"I wonder what she sang about. I hope that when we find her, she'll share."

There was a pang (of jealousy, maybe) at the statement, but Elena Warren wasn't going to let unrequited feelings get the best of her again. She was going to find the damned dreamer and hope that the girl only sang of the dust and the decay and all the things that were truly real around them. Judging by the happy faces on the guitar, though, she was most likely to be crazy enough to stick a flower in a gun barrel.

"We have a clue, but not a lead." She was the one carrying the guitar, and set it down to stare at the childish scribblings all over it.

Tifa smirked. "Aren't you trained to track people down with just the smallest scrap of a clue?"

And Elena couldn't help but grin a little at that. "Maybe the old fogies, but in my day we took pictures of things with our PHS's and let the geeks handle that."

Thankfully, she still had the best in mobile technology at her fingertips and some particularly useful geeks had survived.

ooo

"It's a very creatively designed map. Of the underground."

Reeve had clearly missed his more technical duties, judging by the gleeful tone in his voice as he described whatever visual reconstructive reader thingiedoodle had given him the clearest picture he could ask for regarding the map. It looked like bad modern art combined with a toddler's spaghetti sauce tantrum to her, but to Reeve it seemingly spoke poetry.

"The underground?"

The image peeled away the top layer of noise (you have to get under all the dirt, Elena) and it really did look like a map then. She looked over at Tifa, who had propped her head on her elbow and was focused rather intently.

"We've had reports that certain clusters of survivors went under the city during Meteorfall, but never surfaced. The prevailing theory is that some of them think that the world ended and just settled there."

Elena flicked a piece of lint off her sleeve. "And the other theories?"

"Well, they were already living there in the first place. Some of them."

Tifa stood up. "Well, that's where we're going. Think we can borrow any toys?"

For a leader, Reeve was certainly easy to get things from. Elena remembered the request forms and how Reno used to whine at how long it took for something to come through. They stopped asking and swiped Tseng's access card instead after a while. He pretended not to notice. She had to wonder if willful ignorance was required for that position.

"And... just the two of you are going?"

"What you think we need bodyguards?"

Reeve laughed pretty genuinely at that. Elena had to wonder what would have happened if he'd spoken up sooner.

ooo

Threatening shadows only become
Scary monsters
With the dilation of the eye

ooo

To know that Midgar had burrowed into the planet like a tumor only made sense. Elena imagined that the subterranean dwellers would have been there even if everything had burned. And judging by the subconscious way that Tifa touched a spot on her chest, like a survivor would clutch a locket, fire was on her mind too.

"Do you think that this is where all the dead went?"

Elena was surprised at her tone after all the confidence she'd seen from her. Tifa Lockheart had survived the lie of dreams and the reality of horrors. The wistful bit of breath (do you respect the lost?) was compromising the image she'd built up.

But didn't she always do that? Build someone up into an ikon instead of touch them like a person?

"I never really believed in the promised land, so... this always seemed more likely."

When she took Tifa's hand, it didn't feel like grasping a child's to comfort them, or taking a teacher's to be comforted (there's no comfort in them anyway). It felt like two trees that grew closely together must have felt. And it allowed them to walk forward into the tunnel entrance.

The faint sounds of a Costan guitar kept them moving forward.