"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."
Unknown
The first thing Tifa noticed as she awoke was that she was moving. She blinked, trying to steady her swimming vision. As she regained feeling in her limbs, she realized that she was dangled over a strong, unfamiliar shoulder. Confusion ran through her mind. What happened? she thought dizzily. Where am I? She groaned softly and the person carrying her stopped. She heard unfamiliar voices around her.
Suddenly, her memory returned to her, and she swung her foot as hard as she could into the man's gut. With a wheeze, the man threw her to the ground and hunched over, catching his breath. Tifa hit the ground with bruising force where she sat stunned for a minute. She could hear unfamiliar protesting shouts around her, and a few familiar ones.
"Cloud?" she gasped, clutching her ribs.
"Tifa!" she heard him shout through the other voices.
From the ground, she turned her head, taking in all she saw. They were in a dark corrider, and there were several men surrounding her. Immediately she recognized Cloud, Reno, and Rude, all handcuffed with two strong, strange men restraining each. And wasn't that Heidegger? There were at least twelve, maybe thirteen of the strong built men with Mako eyes. SOLDIERS...Tifa realized, fear starting to pound through her body. She ached from hitting the ground with such force, but she scrambled onto her feet and backed slowly away from the man who was rapidly recovering from the blow she dealt to his stomach.
"Stupid bitch..." he wheezed.
He straightened up, towering at least a foot above her. Tifa froze for a moment as his Mako eyes pierced her, but as he drew a hand back to strike her, her instincts kicked in and she ducked beneath his hand, causing him to lose balance. The SOLDIER gave a shout as he pitched forward.
"Tifa!" she heard Cloud shout. "Run for it!"
Her head snapped towards Cloud, who was struggling against the two men who had him in their grasp. Rude and Reno, too, were struggling against the men restraining them.
We're outnumbered! Tifa thought numbly. And this time, these guys are a match for us...
"Cloud!" she shouted suddenly, rushing forward to aid him.
With nothing but fear and rage powering her, she rushed at the man to his left and thrust her gloveless fist at his face. She heard bones crunch and felt her knuckle split open. They must have taken my gloves...she thought as the blood flowed down her arm. The man howled and let go of Cloud, allowing Cloud to elbow the man to his right in the face, and momentarily freeing him from their grasp.
"Tifa..." he said quietly.
But just as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and press her cheek against his, a voice cut through the chaos.
"Enough! Honestly Heidegger...I give you a simple task and thirteen SOLDIERS and look what happens."
Rough hands pulled Tifa off Cloud and restrained her arms behind her back. The two men who had been restraining Cloud grabbed his arms again. Scarlet's shoes tapped loudly on the hard floor as she made her way to the middle of the group.
Scarlet shook her head, somewhat amusedly. "You all never give up, do you?"
Tifa glared at her angrily.
"And you..." Scarlet said. "Stuck up little bitch."
Scarlet struck her across the face, hard.
"We may have failed in executing you last time but this time..." Scarlet sneered at her before turning to Heidegger. "Take them to their cells...and this time I won't tolerate any mistakes!"
The procession continued down the corrider. The man restraining Tifa held her arms behind her back, so tightly it hurt. Tifa grimaced. She couldn't feel her right hand, and had a dark suspicion that it was broken. Great...she thought cynically. Now I can't even fight back.
The group made a sudden turn into a surgically bright lit hallway. Tifa blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. Shinra guards lined the walls, their guns at the ready. Heidegger waddled to the front of the procession. He eyed them beadily.
"Seperate cells!" he ordered the SOLDIERS.
Tifa turned her head in time to see Reno and Rude being sheperded into two seperate cells. On her other side, two SOLDIERS (one of them with a rapidly swelling cheek, Tifa noted with satisfaction) were locking Cloud into another. Tifa sighed as she was jerked around roughly, and pushed into a cell of her own. The door slammed shut, and then there was complete silence. Tifa felt unshakably uneasy. Sound-proof walls...she thought. I guess they take a few more precautions than Shinra prison did...
With a resigned sigh, Tifa collasped on the thin-matressed bed and cradled her bleeding, aching hand to her chest.
"Never punch someone without proper gloves, Tifa." she recalled Zangan saying, an echo from her past.
"A lot of good that does me now," Tifa grumbled, trying not to get blood on her shirt. "It's amazing how I can't wear a shirt for two days without getting blood on it..."
Realizing she was talking to herself, Tifa hauled herself into a sitting position and examined her knuckles. They were split all the way across, but the bleeding seemed to be letting up. Tentavely, she tried wiggling her fingers. With relief, she found that, though it was agonizing, each of her fingers could move independently. Just bruised or fractured then...she thought. One-handedly, she ripped a thick strip off the bed's white, stiff sheet and wrapped it clumsily around her hand.
"Well that's taken care of..." she muttered.
Drawing her knees up to her chest, she examined the small cell she was in. It was about ten feet long, five feet wide, and completely empty save for the bed she was on and a small toilet. The room was tight, efficient, and Tifa felt all hope of escape fading. Then, blended into the white of the wall, across from her bed, about two inches above the floor, Tifa noticed an air vent. It was only about half a foot long, definately not big enough to climb through, and bolted tightly to the wall. But it was the only part of the room that Tifa saw any hope in.
Tifa stepped off the bed and kneeled on the floor next to the vent. Thinking back to when she was in the corrider, Tifa recalled that there was one cell to the left of her own. Cloud is in the cell across from mine...and Reno and Rude are next to each other but one cell down from me...Tifa thought. I wonder if there's anyone in the cell next to me? She put her ear next to the vent. Air was gently blowing through, causing her hair to be pushed off her face. She could hear nothing. Shifting slightly, she put her mouth next to the vent.
"Hello?" she said, barely above a whisper.
She pressed her ear against the vent. Nothing.
Tifa cleared her throat. "Hello!" she tried a bit louder.
Again, she pressed her ear against the cool metal of the vent. This time she could ear a slight thump, as though someone from the cell next to her had come off their bed and onto the floor. Then she heard a loud, metallic tapping. She removed her ear from the vent and tapped on it with her uninjured hand.
"Hello!" she called into it. "Is anyone there?"
A man's hesistant voice answered her, echoing strangely across the metallic vent. "Hello?"
"Hello!" Tifa responded. "I can barely hear you, speak up!"
"Who is this?" the man asked, a bit louder.
Tifa hesistated at giving out her name, but then realized that if this man was in the same situation as her, there wasn't much he'd be able to do with that information.
"My name is Tifa Lockhart," she said into the vent.
There was a surprised crash on the other end of the vent.
"Tifa?" the voice came, all hesistions gone. "This is Reeve, I mean- this is Cai-"
"I know who you are!" Tifa said happily. "How are you? Are you hurt? We've been looking for you!"
Tifa heard a faint sigh from the other end of the vent. "I'm fine...but in a lot of trouble. What about you? Did you get caught? Are the others with you?"
"Cloud and I are the only ones here..." she said resignedly. "The others are safe for now."
"Did the Turks get you?" Reeve asked.
Tifa felt a pang of hurt in her chest. Granted, Reno had tried to do the right thing in the end, and he was now being punished just as much as her, but it still hurt to know that she was being betrayed all along. I wonder where Elena is? Tifa asked herself. She must had some amount of faith that Reno wouldn't give us away...too bad he was a little late.
"Tifa?" Reeve's voice came, a bit panicky. "You there?"
"Yes." Tifa said. "The Turks got us...kind of."
Taking a deep breath, Tifa told Reeve about what had happened, starting with the Highwind crashing. When she told him about the fire in Midgar she heard him sighing sadly.
"I knew Scarlet was going to do something horrible like that to the people of the slums..." he said cheerlessly.
Tifa finished bringing Reeve up to date, and there was a deafening silence across the vents when she was done.
"So..." Tifa began softly. "What do we do now?"
Reeve sounded a bit hopeless as he replied, "I don't think there's a way out. I've been here for about five days and security here is really tight..."
"And with those SOLDIERS..." Tifa sighed. "Cloud could beat them in a fair fight...and we could probably overpower them all if we had our weapons and friends with us..."
She heard Reeve make a soft sound of agreement. Again, silence descended on the pair. Tifa sighed glumly at their hopeless situation. But just as she began thinking there was nothing left for them to do, she remembered that Reno and Rude's cells were on the other side of Reeve's.
"Hey!" she said, a soft note of hope evident in her voice. "See if you have a vent on the other side of the cell. Reno's cell is to your left."
"I'll try to get his attention...wait a minute." Tifa heard Reeve say.
Tifa slouched against the wall, and closed her eyes as her cell became completely silent again. Without anything to distract her, her hand began throbbing again with nauseating pain. Who knows when I'll get a potion...she thought glumly. She suddenly felt terribly alone in this cold, silent cell with nothing except the pain in her hand and her soft breathing. She wished Reeve would hurry up.
As soon as this thought had formed, she heard a faint voice coming from the vent.
"Tifa? You there?" Reeve asked.
Tifa scrambled back onto her knees and bent close to the vent. "Yes?"
"I managed to talk to Reno." Reeve said. "He said he doesn't see much hope for escape eihter...but he and Rude know this prison better than us so he's talking to Rude about it."
Tifa felt a small bubble of hope. "Okay...tap on the vent if there's anything you need to tell me."
"I will..." Reeve promised her. "You should probably rest up."
Tifa stood up slowly and made her way over to the hard bed. She laid down and curled up immediately, fighting the cold temperature of her cell. But fear and stress had worn her out, and she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.