First chapter of the week.

Chapter 7

"Jeremy?" she asked, dropping her arms to her side and looking into the familiar, friendly face of Jeremy Gristol, the son of Nibelheim's resident carpenter. His brown hair looked a bit unkempt and was in need of a cut.

"Wow, it really is you!" he exclaimed and she felt herself get pulled into a hug. "Why didn't ya write that you'd be moving to Midgar?"

Because I never planned on coming here, she thought bitterly. She just stood there, letting herself be hugged. A wave of relief washed over her knowing that her friend was alright, that Shinra hadn't gotten to him. But she was soon reminded of what Dr. Hiragi had told her: that she needed to be careful.

"It's good to see you," she said carefully, then gently removed herself from the hug. Ignoring his silent question of why she was here, she changed the subject. "So this is where you live?"

"Huh?" He looked confused for a second before nodding. "Yeah. Down the street there."

She watched as he pointed to one of the residential houses, if you wanted to call them that. His eyes then went to the watch on his wrist.

"Shit!" he swore. "Listen, I need to get back to work. How about we catch up later tonight?"

And despite her reservations, despite what Dr. Hiragi had told her about being cautious, she found herself agreeing to his proposal.

Tifa stood in front of the long mirror inside her room, giving herself a once over. She was dressed in a pair of dark pants and a red top that was starting to become even more stretched out compared to before. Did they get bigger again?

With a sigh she grabbed a small leather jacket that and put it on. Like all her clothes it used to belong to Dr. Hiragi's daughter, and had a sort of worn look that gave it character. She turned from side to side. Good, at least it hid that her chest was about to burst out of her top. She didn't want him to get any ideas.

It was just an outing between friends after all.

Putting on her boots, she went to say goodbye to the doctor. The man was too preoccupied with reading a new hypothesis on Mako poisoning to ask any further questions and instead just told her to be careful before she left the clinic.

Tifa slowly walked to the place they had agreed to meet up at: a construction site that was about a ten minute walk away from the clinic, but she was so lost in thought that it took her double that time to get there.

As she arrived, she saw Jeremy sitting on a scaffold, looking down to the ground, seemingly deep in thought himself. For a brief moment she was back at that night in December and it was Cloud waiting for her instead. As she approached him, a frown formed on her face as another memory took its place, this time with the boy that was currently waiting for her, from shortly after New Year's Eve.

Just an outing between friends, she reminded herself.

"Hey," she said to him as she stopped a few feet away, hands in her pockets. That seemed to have done the trick, as he was shaken out of his thoughts and looked at her.

"You came!" His face brightened and he climbed down to join her on the ground.

"Sorry. I got kinda lost," she lied to him, and she felt a bit bad about how easily it came to her to do so. "Still new."

"I know that feeling." They stood there in awkward silence for a brief moment, until Jeremy cleared his throat. "So, uh, ya want to grab a bite? I know a pretty good place nearby."

She exhaled and nodded, smiling slightly. He was her friend; she should try to have a good time. "Sure."

He led her to a small diner. It looked a bit worn down, but it added to the road site charm that the place had, despite being in the middle of the slums below a mega city. As they entered, the pleasant tunes of country music echoed through the room, and she felt that her mood was slowly improving. She always had a weakness for country.

They both sat down in a booth and Tifa took one of the provided menus to skim through, tapping her foot to the music.

"So, still liking the old tunes of Billy Gil I see?" Jeremy asked, also picking up his own menu.

"Always," she chuckled.

"Hear the old man is releasing a new album later this year," he said, making her look up at him.

"Is that so?" she asked, her curiosity piqued. Jeremy gave her a small grin and nodded. Closing her eyes, she silently cursed the fact that she couldn't buy it. Oh well.

Soon a waitress came by to take their orders. Tifa went with a small burger, not really feeling too hungry.

"So how do ya like the big city so far?" he asked her.

"Throws quite the shade," she said while fingering one of the sleeves of her jacket, then looked him in the eyes. She could see the questions burning behind the dark shade of green, but she didn't want to answer any of them right now. "So have you heard anything from the others?" she asked before he could vocalize any of his.

"Uh, yeah." He nodded and a smile formed on his face. "Daniel's still good old Daniel. Works in a shop now; yeah, I know."

Tifa chuckled. Daniel was the son of the late general store owner, that had wanted to leave Nibelheim because he had no wish to inherit the family business. "Guess he ended up following in his dad's footsteps."

"Heh, yeah." he tapped his finger against the table. "So Tim and Bryan both live above the plate actually."

"Wow, how did they manage that?"

Jeremy shrugged. "Bryan got a job at Shinra. I think he's a manager now, and Tim is working at a jeweler's. I heard they got married recently."

She raised an eyebrow. "To each other?"

"Yeah, who would have thought they were into guys?"

Looking back at it, they both had always been pretty close, and by the time they had left town they were nearly inseparable. But what worried her was that one of them was working for Shinra. Would he know that something had happened to their hometown?

Shinra would undoubtedly keep tabs on both of them them.

Jeremy didn't tell her anything about Cloud, but that didn't surprise her. Cloud and him had fought a lot back in Nibelheim, so there was no love lost.

After their food arrived, they proceeded to eat with varying degrees of small talk in between, with Tifa trying to keep the topic light to avoid having to answer any unwanted questions. Thankfully Jeremy didn't pry, and soon they were reminiscing about the good old days, something that Tifa could manage to hold onto now without seeing the disturbing images of the massacre. It took a while, but Tifa started to enjoy herself and even laughed at one of his jokes. It was almost like they were back in their early teens again.

"So, what is it that you're doing with your life?" she asked him teasingly, resting her chin on her left hand.

"I actually work at the construction site we've met up. It's nothing fancy, but it pays the bills, so there's that," he told her. "I guess I also followed in my father's footsteps, too, in a way."

When they were done eating, Jeremy paid their bill, ignoring her insistence to pay her share of it, and they left. Side by side they walked through the street, as he guided her to his place, a companionable silence between them. She was honestly curious to see how one of her few remaining friends lived. His apartment was neat and orderly, a far cry from how the slums generally looked, but it still held the rusty feel that most buildings here had. It looked...nice. But when she heard the door close behind Jeremy, she felt that apprehension from earlier return in full force.

"Do you want to take off your jacket?" he asked her with a friendly smile.

"No..." She pulled the jacket a bit closer to her and walked around a little. "So this is your place, huh?"

He shrugged and gave her a little crooked smile. "It's nothing fancy, but it's mine. Well, not the furniture, I more or less inherited it from the last tenant."

She hummed and stopped in front of a few photographs. Of him, her and the others. Of his family. And as she looked at them that smell of fire and blood was invading her nostrils once again, turning her insides upside down. Averting her eyes she walked back to the middle of the room. What was she doing here?

"Listen, it's been fun today bu—" before Tifa could finish what she was saying, she felt his hand cup her cheek as he gently pressed his lips against hers. Her eyes widened in shock, and she felt herself frozen in place as he kissed her. It was only when she felt his other hand place itself on the small of her back that she found the strength to push him away.

"No!" she shouted as he stumbled back against the wall, his eyes widening in shock and confusion. She threw him a glare and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. So nothing really changed, did it?

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself she stood back up straight and looked him dead in the eye, repeating the same words to him that she had said to him years ago, when he had first made his interest in her known. "I'm not interested," she said in as firm a voice as she could manage right now.

Her words must have triggered something in him, as she saw his eyes narrow while a sneer crossed his lips. He pushed himself off the wall. "You still want him ?" He took a step closer to her. "Cloud , who you said went off to become one of Shinra's super-powered freaks!?"

"Don't you dare talk about Cloud like that!" Saying those words she got right up in his face, pointing a finger at hist chest, not caring that he had apparently known her feelings for the blond boy well before she had fully realized them.

"Don't I dare?" he spat. "In case you've forgotten, he was the one that always picked fights with us. He broke my nose once just because I looked at him funny!"

He looked at her like he hardly knew her. "And you want that piece of shit?"

It took every ounce of her willpower not to punch him. But he was not done yet.

"So is that why you're here? Why you didn't tell anyone? Ran away from home to be with your favorite bully?" he shook his head. "Your father must be ashamed of you."

In a flash he was stumbling back against the wall, blood bursting from his nose, and before he could do anything she clenched her fist into his shirt to keep him standing straight.

"My father is DEAD!" she shouted at him and she barely registered the look of shock in his eyes as she continued. Something inside her had finally snapped, and she blew caution completely to the wind. "Same as old Rose, Claudia and everyone else. They were all killed by Shinra!" She pushed him hard against the wall again. "So don't you goddamn tell me what my father must be thinking. You weren't there. You didn't see everyone lying dead on the ground, didn't smell the fire and blood in the air!"

With some sick satisfaction she noticed him wincing after she pushed him one more time, before letting him fall to the ground, where he started to nurse his bloody nose with his hands; broken. Tifa simply stood there, trembling in anger.

It took a while before Jeremy did anything other than just stare at her with confused eyes, but eventually he burst out laughing. "Are you for real?"

The only response he received from her was another glare.

"Nibelheim was destroyed," he scoffed. "And Shinra did it? Well, that's rich, isn't it? Hey, maybe Cloud did it too, I bet he'd love to do it himself!"

How dare you! Cloud would never have anything to do with that. Shinra must have kept it from him. If he knew, he would have gone looking for her; to save her. Save her from this hellhole of a city. Like he had promised her!

Jeremy scoffed again. "Besides, if Nibelheim was destroyed, how come I just got a letter from my father yesterday?"

Everything went cold inside her upon hearing those words, the anger that she was feeling instantly dissipating into small frozen crystals that caused her mind to go blank. His father wrote to him?

Inside her mind she saw the beheaded corpse of Jeremy's father, lying close to his shop, his head a few feet away, cradled by the stabbed corpse that had been Jeremy's mother.

And all of a sudden she was reminded of what Dr. Hiragi had told her. Was this how Shinra was keeping tabs on him? If so, then Shinra was even more frightening than she had imagined.

Tifa felt her breath grew ragged as Jeremy glared daggers at her. With a start she turned tail and ran out of the door, ignoring his calls from behind her as panic finally seized her. She pulled her jacket over her head in an attempt to shield herself from any possible onlookers as she ran all the way back to the clinic.

It was a week later when she had finally mustered up enough courage to confront him again. But when she had arrived at his doorstep she found that his apartment was completely empty and that a sign reading Open for rent had been placed on the door.

Again: Dun Dun Dun
If I was cruel i'd just leave it here. But I'll be posting the next chapter right after this.