Part III

AUGH. So, I tell myself, this isn't a oneshot anymore so try to just roll with the chapters. Sadly, I'm still convincing myself that each part will be the last one and it keeps not being true. I'm trying to spare everyone having to read through really really long chapters. Think, I could have made it one humongous chapter, but I know how frustrated I get when there are no convenient stopping points. . . so I'm doing this for all of you who read this. (All thirty of you, says the snarky voice in my head.) Stupid brain. Next time make a real oneshot.

And by the way, I gave up on editing right about. . . now.

Disclaimer: (See Part I)

"I shouldn't have thrown you out. Come upstairs with me." Tifa watched Rufus' face, her eyebrows almost meeting her hairline, and tried not to let her desire to pump for a well defined apology rule her brain just like she couldn't let her fists pummel his face. She could only assume that that's what he meant the first part as. It did not surprise her that the spoiled son of a Shinra was not in possession of a better vocabulary of supplication. As it was she thought she would sooner confront men in white lab coats than this man in a white trenchcoat, unbuttoned, with his hair messy and his eyes lined with the dark circles of someone who had lost sleep. Tifa herself was still up despite the late hour. It had been nearly a day and a half since he had thrown her out of his apartments; she had spent the time trying not to think about her fate.

Rufus, who was out of breath after having run through the halls to slam open her door and demand her presence, seemed to twitch as Tifa sat there on her bed and stared at him levelly. Her calm was a product of her general startled assessment of this situation and not any reflection of having a truly cool head, but he was so flustered that all he could do was react angrily to her.

"I shouldn't have come down here." His frosty blue eyes flashed her a hint of his usual aloof defense mechanism. He stuck hands in his pockets and wandered down the hallway, back to his apartment and his growing insanity.

Tifa watched the door swing slowly closed, but it didn't bump its resting spot hard enough to drive it closed. Not that that would have mattered, because it had been unlocked and unguarded for some time. She knew why she didn't escape, and while she still told herself it had everything to do with Cloud, sometimes—in dark moments during the past day as she passed the time—she had to admit that Rufus had crept in there too. As a curiosity surely, or as a distraction from her inevitable discovery and probable execution, but Rufus was filling her thoughts.

What really disturbed her, in these rare moments, was the way she didn't revile him as she used to feel she had to. Instead of hate there were attempts at compassion, at understanding, and more than a little guilty attraction. Even if she tried to explain it away as just being fond of blond hair and blue eyes, what she found her mind lingering on was the way he commanded a room, or the fascinating way he seemed to switch his emotions on and off with control that she had never tried to perfect in herself. Tifa prized her personal honesty, her big heart, and her loyalty. Even as she was trapped here in an impossible situation she felt compelled to help this man, her captor, who seemed so damaged.

He had just lost a parent and she wanted to empathize, but then, he was also a dick. No, no, that was her residual anger at him talking. Tifa could still be a friend to Rufus, and it didn't have to be entirely for selfish or superficial reasons. The main self serving reason that she could pinpoint at the moment was to get rid of the guilt for telling him he could never have any real friends. Thick brown hair slid forward to cover her face as shame overtook her for her hasty judgment. If nothing else, she wanted to prove herself wrong.

Tifa stood and stretched out her body from the cramped sitting position she had been in and then sprinted through the door and down the hall. Squarely, she hit her target and linked her arm into one of Rufus'. Now she was the one trying to control her breathing, and they didn't say a word as they waited for the elevator together. There was literally no one around, being the middle of the night and on a secret basement floor of the building. The intimacy of the situation was suffocating, but Tifa forced herself to hold on to his arm with his hands firmly located in the pockets if his heavy white coat.

"I'm here because I want to be, and not because you ordered me to." She told him and she saw his jaw clench but no other marked change in relation to this news.

The code he punched in for his floor was different than the one he had used before, and she didn't bother to try to memorize it as she had tried and failed to do in the past. Tifa had admitted defeat to a female a continent away, and now she knew this was where she belonged for the good of her party. Her hands tightened on Rufus' arm as she looked at the mountains through the glass and the bright glow from the Golden Saucer.

"I've never been there, you know. The Golden Saucer, I mean. There's a lot of places I suppose I never thought I'd see." Neither of them seemed to want to finish the sentence. But the unspoken words: 'And I'll never see them now' hung between them. Rufus turned his face to the side, away from even peripherally viewing Tifa's visage.

"It's gaudy, loud, and overpriced. The Golden Saucer wouldn't suit someone like you. The place is too fake." Rufus spoke gruffly, but his words pleased Tifa. He thought she was an authentic person, and that meant a lot to her. In fact, the vote of confidence meant more to her than she could properly express at the moment.

The door opened to reveal his apartment. Rufus shrugged off her arm and sat down on the couch, hands still in pockets, a pout on his face that made him look strangely young. He couldn't be much older than she was, Tifa thought with a start, and they might even be the same age. It was too young to be running a company and too old to be indulging in a temper tantrum.

"So did you want to talk to me or what?" She didn't move from the entrance, and crossed her arms with a scowl playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Yes. . . no. . . I don't know!" Rufus threw up his hands and pulled off of the couch to skulk over to the bar and pour himself a drink.

"Alcohol doesn't help, and I should know. . ." Tifa bit her lip before she gave away too much. Her old life didn't exist anymore and she might as well forget it.

Rufus rolled his eyes at her and finished pouring himself a rather large glass of something that looked strong and expensive to Tifa's sharp bartender eyes. He took a large swig and promptly began coughing, eyes watering. There was most of the liquid left, but she didn't want him drinking on what was no doubt an empty stomach.

This time Tifa softened her voice and tried to smile. "Want to try eating and talking again, or do you think we might be jinxed?"

"Do whatever you want. Just pick up that phone and press the 3."

Tifa looked around until she spied the phone to which Rufus had been referring. A sleepy voice answered and she shyly requested a sandwich and a jug of iced water. It was like ordering room service at a hotel and Tifa was not the sort who had allowed herself such an extravagance. Rufus was sitting on a bar style stool and swirled the liquid around in his glass with the umbrella end of one of those miniature cocktail models. Tifa sat down next to him, amused despite herself. The whole situation was surreal.

"I decided that you and I are going to spend the rest of my vacation together. There are a few days left of it, and this seems to be the most productive thing I can do right now. Maybe even the only productive thing." He picked the umbrella out and looked at its sodden mass with disgust. "If I can't figure out what's so special with you by the end of the week then. . . I'm letting you go."

Tifa felt her body petrify. She forced her lips to form around words, her heavy tongue almost not getting all the sounds quite right. "Let me go? As in, I just walk out of here?"

"Naturally not. It will look like you escaped. There will be a small investigation, some people will be moved around to different jobs then life goes on." He gave her a look as if she were stupid for not knowing how these things went.

Her own defense mechanism, her temper, flared. "Excuse me, it isn't as if I'm normally in elaborate corporate cover-ups. . ."

"What's more, you're going to stay here rather than in your 'cell'." This time when he took a deep drink from his glass he didn't cough. His throat must still be burning from the last one, she thought. It wasn't as if she could think about what he had just said. Her mind refused.

"What?"

"Are you brain damaged? You're staying here. In the bedroom to be precise, and don't give me that look like you're some sort of prim schoolmarm. . . I'll be out here on the couch." Those eyes of his which she had admired before but now wanted to gouge out with hot pokers, or even her bare hands, were not lingering on anything for very long and his unfocused look betrayed how the alcohol was flowing through his blood. The steady way in which he spoke to her gave none of that away. "If you have a problem with it then I could always just send you back down so they can hook up electrodes to you like I know some of the senior research scientists wanted. . ."

Tifa thought about spinning off of the stool, vaulting the bar, and throwing every last bottle of booze on that expensive glass shelving at his perfectly handsome and evil head. "I don't suppose I can do anything except let you bully me."

"How could you possibly be mad about this? You get a good situation, you get my protection, and unless something truly untoward happens you're guaranteed freedom."

"I can protect myself." She began to walk away from him, intent on waiting by the elevator until he gave up what was obviously insomnia and alcohol inspired madness.

His lip curled, and his fingers twirled the ice in the empty glass to make a strange clinking noise. "And I suppose you can protect Wallace and Strife too. . . and Red XIII. . ."

Arrows, each name was an arrow in her retreating back. Loyalty in this case was a chain that he could use to yank her back. How much did he know, and what did he intend to do to them? "Yes. I can protect them."

"They've been making quite the little cross country jaunt without you. A day or two ago they were at that hick chocobo farm, if I recall correctly." Was he a mean drunk, or was it just her presence that did this to him? "Why, Strife even has a tart. Skinny little thing. Don't know how she's making the march in so much monster country. And Wallace makes such a great amount of noise with that gun of his everywhere he goes that finding their group was easy. Pay off a few townsfolk, beat a few others and suddenly you can know what they ate for breakfast."

Was he spying inside of her thoughts somehow? At the moment he managed to find all of her feelings of inadequacy and pick at them until they bled. Rufus was a natural CEO. Tifa, instead of admitting anything, chose the high road for once and marched herself across the room, opened the door and walked in with a slam.

Rufus waited, a faint smile working across his face slowly. Everything was swimming in front of him but he could have sworn she. . . ah yes. The bathroom door opened and Tifa walked out, teeth gritted together and fists clenched.

"Your sandwich will be here soon, and your water. I hope you choke!" This time she opened the correct door to his bedroom and slammed it. The lack of lock didn't stop her from pushing a wardrobe in front of the door. That project took a lot of grunting and scraping across the expensive wood inlay on the floor, but Rufus could afford the damage if anyone could. As soon as she finished she huffed and sat on the bed while loud laughter filtered through the door.

"Good night to you too, Tifa!" Came the muffled voice through the door.

Tifa twisted onto her stomach and buried her face into a pillow.

"You can't bar yourself in that room in perpetuity!"

"Yes I can!"

"This isn't some corny fairy tale and I'm not a monster!"

"That's what you think!"

Rufus leaned against the bedroom door and continued his vigil. When he had awakened to find her still barred in his room, he dismissed it as stubborn childishness and that soon things would go the way he wanted them to. She may be holding his clean clothes hostage, but he was in possession of the bathroom and all the food and liquid resources. He was not the one trapped by this situation, but she made him feel as if he were trapped. The idea that she did it because she truly didn't like him lingered. The remark she had made about how he could never have any friends still bit at the corner of his mind even though he wasn't fishing for it.

"At least tell me why you're so mad at me. You seemed eager enough to come up here last night with me. I don't understand why you need to be so difficult now." He wondered if he sounded as petulant as he felt.

Was Tifa also leaning against the door, thinking the question over? Bribes didn't seem to work on her so reason would have to carry the day. Normally, that would have been his first course of action but nothing about his ideas about Tifa were reasonable. Damn it all, he was willing to admit it to himself that he had feelings for her, rosy colored romantic ones, and they clouded his judgment. Rufus hated this. Even if he knew these feelings were there he didn't have to admit it and he wanted to take these vacation days before he went back to life as usual and figure things out. Why did they exist there? What in Tifa caused them?

"I am mad at you because you are rude, presumptuous, and high handed. In addition, you threatened my friends and I don't appreciate that at all, you ass." She sounded like she was going to add more, but held back. Rufus was willing to lay even odds that the rest of her thought was either more swearing at him or perhaps was too closely allied to her personal mental anguish for her to add it. He wished she had added it anyway, since he wanted to know what it was that made her tick, and what it was that kept her here.

Rufus sighed. His head hurt a little bit, having not drunk enough of the water that had come with the sandwich last night. "Can we talk, then? Or is that being too presumptuous?" The snide comment was out before he even thought about and he hit his head against the door in frustration, only to screw up his face at the instant pounding pain in his temples.

"Go ahead and talk. It's your building."

He could have had someone up here hours ago to take the door off the hinges, and that thought had occurred to him more than once, but something told him that if he couldn't get her out of that room on his own then he'd never find his answers. "I thought about the things you told me. . . about my father." Rufus paused too long, waiting for her to take the bait.

"Yes? And?"

Couldn't resist, he knew it. "You were totally wrong, of course. You seemed to have this wooly notion that my father and I were close, but I've talked to my lawyers hours more than I ever spoke to my father. I was a trophy for him to parade in front of clients, and I took the absolute freedom he gave me to secure my own place in the Shinra empire. He was an excellent tool, and I regret him passing in that respect." There was banging coming from inside the room, followed by a muffled crash. It was likely that she was throwing his things around. Tifa's emotions were so close to the surface, she was so easy to manipulate.

"I'm not done yet!" Rufus called over the ruckus. "What you did have right, which I didn't see, is all the guilt I feel about the whole situation." The noises behind the door stopped. "No one should have died that day, not even my father, because Sephiroth was a mistake. Shinra should have been prepared, my father and I should have reinforced our security. . . I should have had things under control." Rufus' voice become quiet as self recrimination set in. "To elevate myself to the position of president through my folly as opposed to my success. . ." At that point he had gone too far into his own comfort zone to say more. It was one thing to tell Tifa enough of the truth to get her to come out, but she didn't need to know the whole of it. The silence went from hopeful to depressing. She might very well just stay there until she starved.

"I'm sorry I just broke your lamp."

Rufus shot mental fists of victory into the air. "It's nothing you need worry about. Everything is replaceable."

"That's not a good way of approaching life."

"So who will take responsibility if I get attached to that lamp and then it breaks? I think it leaves me in a worse position. Then I have no lamp and in addition I feel bad about it." This was actually starting to get fun. Tifa was visually distracting, and it seemed to be easier to talk when he couldn't see her face.

"If you fear a little bit of disappointment more than losing a lot of money, then you must be very shallow and very emotionally immature."

"Let me get this straight, you can say harsh things to me, but if I even suggest that we should spend time together and that gets me your eternal enmity?" He tried to make it playful sounding, but to him it was a legitimate question.

Tifa sounded flustered. "Look, I'm sorry. I don't know why I keep saying cruel things to you. No one else gets me this off balance. I really try to be a good person. I think that's what everyone is trying to be."

"Even me?"

"You. . . have hope."

And that clinched it, he had her in the corner he needed her in. Time to close this deal. "Then I'm willing to put my money where your mouth is. Prove it. Prove this to me that I'm this good person in potentia. I know I'm evil, I glory in it, but if you can convince me by some miracle that I'm a decent human being then you can walk away from me and I won't stop you."

There was that long and uncomfortable silence again. Their old friend.

"Take me to the beach." Finally she was making demands. This was the kind of thing he had come to expect from women. Give them gifts and any number of sins were forgiven, but it was strange that this was coming from Tifa. Rufus fought back a strong disappointment.

"Which resort?"

"No resorts. We're on a whole continent full of beautiful white sand beaches. There must be some patch out there that isn't covered in garbage and food vendors." Her voice strained as she spoke, and there was steady scraping as she moved whatever she had used to block the door. Rufus got up from where he was leaning on the door and stifled the gloat that tried to stretch his face into a grin. She was opening the door and it was all of her own free will.

"But I'm going to need a bathing suit, if you would be nice enough to lend me one." Tifa opened the door, clothes rumpled and hair messy. Behind her the room looked like it had been ransacked, and Rufus peeked to the side to survey the damage as Tifa shrank into herself with a blush. "Let's just get going."

"How could you be so very white!?" Tifa laughed and fell over her own legs into the water as Rufus stood in front of her with his arms crossed. It had taken cajoling, threats, even some modest begging, to actually get him into the water. The fruits of her efforts were before her, as Rufus walked into the waves with his arms crossed and a deep frown that proclaimed he wasn't going to let himself have any fun. His muscular body was well toned, but obviously because of careful physical training and not daily physical labor.

"Look, if you spent every early year in boarding school and then every year after that behind a desk then you would be similar to me." Rufus made a face as he adjusted to the cold water. "And which one of us is the President of the biggest company ever seen on this planet?"

"There is no rule that says you can't be a dictator and take some time to appreciate nature."

"Then I'll make one." He braced his hands against waves trying to bowl him over. "Tell me why I'm doing this."

Tifa, who was not resisting the waves, bobbed in them and enjoyed the motion. "Because I wanted to see if you would." She ducked under the water when Rufus shot her a terribly poisonous look.

"That's not a good reason, I'm getting out and you're not pulling this waste of time on us again, do you understand me?" Rufus had turned and was walking back but when there was no response from Tifa, he turned around and tried to make his point more clearly. Naturally, there was no one there. He whipped his head about, trying to locate the missing girl, when he remembered her sinking into the waves. . . and not surfacing.

Something like panic squeezed his heart, but he didn't let it show on the outside. Even if he disliked the freezing water and even if it hurt his eyes more than he could imagine trying to look through the murky waves, Rufus attempted to find her. He passed where the waves broke, and scanned the deepening waters around him. No Tifa. Already his mind was creating elaborate justifications for why her disappearance or accidental death would only be a benefit to his situation. There would be no more distractions, and there would no longer be any unsettling emotions ruffling his well ordered regimen. If she wasn't there no one would ask him any bothersome questions; and he could be respected and, more importantly, feared by everyone he came across. It was going to be great.

But if it was going to be so great then why did he feel like someone took a hammer to his solar plexus?

"Tifa!" He couldn't even hear himself over the ocean noises, how the hell would she ever hear him? "Tifa!"

Visions of a funeral, fully decked out with flowers and many mourners from his company filled his mind without his bidding. They would have no idea why Rufus Shinra would be having any sort of to do for an unknown woman. There would be unsavory rumors. There would be uncomfortable questions. And he didn't even have a picture. . . just surveillance videos.

The horrors in his mind overlapped with reality when his vision of a floating body became a tangible force not twenty feet away from him. It was with numb arms that Rufus pulled himself over and then grabbed her limp form. He yelled at her, threatened any number of punishments if she died, but her eyes remained closed and her body unresponsive. In a tumble the two of them landed, swept in forcibly by the waves, and Rufus dragged her away from the water.

"Fuck! What do I do!? Don't die. I knew this was a bad idea. . . damn it you're stronger than this!" Rufus shook her body as he laid her down onto the sand. He didn't know CPR, just that it had something to do with forcing air into someone, right?

Once he had leaned in closely, to try to give this CPR thing a shot anyway, Tifa's eyes opened and her face broke into a smile which was undimmed by the scraggily strands of sandy hair covering her face. "I knew you were a good person." Her cinnamon eyes swallowed up his dilated blue ones.

Things happened quickly. At first there was the relief that she was alive. Then, swift on its heels, there was the burning anger over being tricked. They screwed up together in his mind and he blurted out. "I wish I knew CPR so when you do drown I can just stand back and watch you gurgle."

"Don't be like that. A truly bad person wouldn't have cared if I lived or died." She sat up on her elbows. "You really don't know CPR?"

Rufus had reached that cold place inside his anger and he sat with his legs crossed and stared at her. "No. And did it occur to you if you had actually had trouble then you would have been stuck with a watery grave and an uppity sense of satisfaction that I don't want you in particular to die?" Tifa smiled indulgently and he wanted to wipe that expression off of her face. "Maybe I just didn't want my project to end."

"Would you like me to teach you CPR?" Her blatant change in subject was not welcome, but it did move away from the subject of feelings as a whole and the incident and his reaction in specific so he allowed it to progress.

"Sure. Why not."

"You had the right idea. I'll lay down on my back again. Now pretend I'm not breathing. . ."

"Hah."

"Don't be like that." Tifa leaned up once more to give him a withering look before she resumed her prone position on the sand. "Now push with your hands like so right here, where I'm pointing on my chest."

Rufus tried not to let on how much this was unsettling him. Was she jerking him around even now? Touching her was something he dearly wanted to do, and even this little lesson was tantalizing him to take advantage of the situation. She had meant it to diffuse the bad feelings between them, but Rufus was getting more tense than he wanted to admit to.

He licked dry lips and tried to follow her instructions. At least he was damp from their jaunt in the sea so no sweat was bothering him, but knowing that she wouldn't think twice about how clammy his hands were was a small comfort. "Is that it?"

"Not quite." Tifa bit her lip. "Um. . . maybe we should call it a day. . ."

"No, you started this. I want to know."

"Then let me just explain. . . see you pinch the nose and create a tight seal with your lips so you can blow in. . ." Her cheeks colored.

It seemed like a good time to tease her now that she was flustered herself. "Oh? I'm not sure I know what you mean. I think you'd better demonstrate."

"Stop it! Let me up. We should go back anyway. I'm getting cold." She was going to chew through her lip at the rate she was going, worrying at it like that. It was as if he went from feeling hunted to looking at cornered prey. The way her hands gripped his arms and then pulled back as if she had been shocked. . . she felt the spark too.

Rufus, still perched above her, his hair dripping onto her chest, tried not to let his hungry feelings show through and scare her. Tifa seemed to have gotten skittish and he didn't want her running off so early in this game, not when she was the one who had made it more interesting.

"Whatever you want. Just promise me you don't have any more surprises like that last one."

"I promise. I thought it was more playful than it ended up being. . . Sorry."

It wasn't fair. Ever since they had gone to the beach, Rufus had gone from the awkward young man back to the suave and confident jerk she remembered. One moment of weakness and she couldn't get back the upper hand that she had momentarily gained when he thought she was going to die. It had been a sudden decision to try that prank, and he had reacted more dramatically than she could have hoped for. When she had seen how panicked Rufus had become she felt remorse, but in her attempt to alleviate her guilt and provide some useful information she had encountered something she hadn't felt in a long time.

Hormones were supposed to become more manageable in time. Then again, they had always been manageable because the object of her ever strong affection had been so far away it hadn't mattered. To find that her body wanted to respond to any man other than Cloud, and to have it be a man like Rufus. . .

It wouldn't have galled her so much if it were not for the fact that Rufus knew and was using it against her. What had seemed to be something more along the lines of a path to personal discovery when he had presented wanting to get to know her had become uncomfortably more like a path to discovering her person. This was not what she had in mind when she thought of helping Rufus Shinra or becoming his friend.

Admit it, somewhere in there you think this is great. Tifa stomped on the voice in her head with her mental patented big brown boots. Anything to keep it quiet. Why would she want this? She had no reason to want this! The devil in her head played advocate for Rufus while Tifa argued it down and tried to hold a decent conversation with Rufus.

Her distraction must be evident because he was giving her that look again, the one that said she had missed something he said and now he expected a response but knew whatever she said was going to be nonsense. More games. Was his whole life one long manipulation? How tiring that must be.

"Please, repeat what you just said. I guess I was wandering in my mind a bit." She shrugged her shoulders and Rufus scooted closer on the couch, prompting her to scoot back again. This was scoot number two for both of them. Tifa wanted a healthy buffer of space for conversational safety, but Rufus seemed to think that the closer they were the better they communicated.

"I said," Scoot. "I was thinking of cutting out the parade in Junon entirely. It's just another marketing ploy. We don't need more publicity. Shinra is 80 of the world's markets already."

"Maybe so," Scoot. "But you must realize that this is a celebration introducing you to everyone. So far as anyone knows, some faceless CEO just took over. This is to make people comfortable, not to get them to buy more things." Her irritation with the situation made her feel prickly. "Don't you like this kind of attention? You're vain enough."

"What makes you say that?" Scoot.

"Who else has the audacity to wear white clothes all the time?" Scoot. "It just screams 'look at me'."

Rufus smirked and shed the outer coat. "White and black are good solid colors. And people should pay attention to me. I am the President."

"But you attract a lot of attention anyway just being you."

"In what way?" Rufus' eyes were practically sparking with mirth now.

Tifa tried to think of something that wouldn't give away her disturbing buds of affection for him. "You. . . have a lot of presence. I guess, the way you give orders to people. . . it's like you can't imagine anyone would ever tell you 'no'."

"You're right. I don't expect to hear anything except what I want to hear. And only you deny me." Scoot. "Tifa, may I ask you something?"

"Yes," Big scoot. "You can ask whatever. I wonder if I actually have a choice or not in the matter."

He pretended to look wounded. When he edged forward, Tifa realized she was at the edge of the couch and she would be deposited on the floor if she scooted back any more. Rufus grabbed her hands with his own and Tifa tried not to pull away and kick him, which her alarmed and well trained instincts demanded. "I suppose I haven't done much to prove myself trustworthy. But I would be extremely happy if you would accompany me to Junon for this useless parade. I don't think I could tolerate it otherwise." Tifa looked away and Rufus got in that last punch to the gut. "If nothing else, do it for all those people you said I need to give faith to."

Tifa felt how close he was, felt his soft hands on her rough ones. He had the hands of a person who didn't do a lot of their own dirty work. That thought didn't make him seem any weaker to her, whereas before it would have been enough to gain at least a modicum of contempt. Rufus knew he had won this battle. Tifa sighed.

"Sure."

She was floored by the way his eyes lit up with sincere delight. In response, she smiled too, but when her eyes closed slightly Rufus dove in. With her hands in his, Tifa had no way to defend against the attack. Then, before she could process it, they were kissing and Tifa was leaning into it. When they broke apart, Rufus let her hands go and Tifa went tumbling off of her perch on the edge of the couch when her limp legs gave up on her.

"Wear the gold dress tomorrow, we're leaving for Junon by lunch. I need to go take care of some details, now that it's final." He didn't offer to help her up as he exited.

Tifa sat on the floor, fingers brushing her lips with stunned stiffness. It took some time for her snap out of it, for the competing voices in her head to stop internally gasping.

"What next?" She implored the coffee table. There was no raging anger over being taken advantage of. All that she felt was a pleasant buzz from the adrenaline that flooded her system.

Spirits help me, I think I might like him. . .

What else could go wrong with her life?