The world was determined to be difficult.

It was the only conclusion Sephiroth could reach as he studied the intelligence leak. Rufus Shinra was going to try and manipulate him by getting at Tifa.

He narrowed his eyes at the unadorned walls of his Junon office and considered his options.

Rufus had escaped the initial wave of arrests on account of not being technically guilty of anything but his birth. He was guilty of a great many other things in subtle, difficult-to-prove ways, but nothing so important that he was worth going after back when Sephiroth's goal had been toppling the corporation as a whole.

In the two years since then, Rufus had retained control of the Turks and weaselled his way out of every charge brought against him. Sephiroth was trying to set up a world that ran according to commonly agreed-upon rules such as 'innocent until proven guilty' and 'right to a fair trial'. He couldn't break those rules so soon after establishing them.

It was supremely vexing.

He had lured Rufus out into bolder and bolder attempts at criminal activity so that justice could be done. Under other circumstances, this would have been perfect.

He reached for his phone and messaged Tifa.

An attempting kidnapping was exactly the evidence he needed. Tifa likely wouldn't even object. But she was a time traveller. His time traveller. For her to take the stand and testify was unacceptable, even more so than the injustices the little Shinra was continuing to get away with.

Very well then. If Rufus wanted to be underhanded about it, he would oblige.

He went about the rest of his day, blinking through a tension headache. He took a call from the Mayor of Corel and ignored one from the Premier of Costa Del Sol. Then he washed his hands of the world for the day and drove down to the bar.

The street was all but abandoned on a Monday night. A delivery vehicle with no license plate idled outside an establishment several doors down, though no workers were in sight to unload it. The wind howled up from the ocean and the nearest streetlight was dead.

The door to Tifa's bar wasn't locked. He pushed it open.

Tifa stood over a seated Reno up at the bar, tending to his broken nose. Rude sat on the floor, trying to massage feeling back into his knee without jostling a clearly broken wrist and ankle.

Both Turks looked at him and froze. Reno's mouth snapping shut mid retort and silence seized upon the room.

"No, leave the ice on," Tifa said, pushing an ice pack back onto his face. She went about her business, utterly unfazed.

Reno cleared his throat, a noisy operation with the bloody state of his face. "You're a mean one, miss."

Sephiroth strolled in, unhurried. Their eyes followed him, Reno's shoulders tensing as he closed the distance. Rude's uninjured hand slid beneath the lapel of his jacket. Sephiroth looked at him. He put his hand back in his lap.

"You attacked me on my night off," Tifa said, "what were you expecting?"

Reno feigned a sigh. "Fine. You owe me a drink though."

Sephiroth sat at the bar behind Reno, watching how his head twitched with the urge to look back at him. Rude hauled himself up to his feet, leaning heavily on the back of a chair.

Sephiroth said nothing and made no move to influence the situation. She wasn't weak and didn't need the help, a point she had made admirably. They would not be goaded by the Turks' antics.

Tifa looked at him over Reno's shoulder and rolled her eyes. Then she snapped Reno's nose back into place and got a yell for her efforts.

"Alright?" she asked when he had stopped fussing, her arms crossed.

"Yeah."

"Good." She smiled far more indulgently than any of them deserved. "Now get out."

They cleared out obediently, supporting each other.

"Reno," Sephiroth said before the could open the door.

The two froze.

"Tell Rufus he'll be seeing me soon."

He gave Sephiroth a terse nod and they left.

Tifa regarded him sidelong when they were alone, stretching her arms out over her head.

"You're early," she said.

He put his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. "I thought you might need help disposing of some bodies."

She hummed playfully. "Maybe next time." She leaned into him and kissed him.

She looked thoughtfully across the room after they parted. One of the chairs sat in a broken heap and the tables were knocked askew, but there was no serious damage. He caught sight of a bruise starting to blossom on her jaw. Nothing about the situation surprised him: not how soundly she trounced them or that she took the time to patch them up afterwards. He traced a finger over the shiny patch of skin, pulsing his cure materia.

"They used to be better fighters," she said quietly.

He shrugged. "You have more experience."

Her wistful smile turned self-satisfied. "I really thought he was going to dodge in time."

He admired how bright and sharp her eyes were.

"You're too kind to those who would hurt you," he said, utterly without shame.

She snorted and declined to take the bait. She looked up at the clock on the wall.

"You are early."

"Should I leave?"

She raised an sceptical eyebrow. "Did you come here without a reason?"

He stood. "Do I need one?"

"You're in a mood," she said, lifting her chin.

She was right. He was. His hands flexed on her waist. It had hounded him all week, a brooding frustration slowly cutting off his air supply.

"Come back to my place," he asked. He wasn't sure if it came out commanding or desperate.

She looked him up and down, her eyes turning inscrutable at whatever she saw. "I have to finish packing away stock. Give me thirty minutes?"

He nodded and they pulled apart. She disappeared back of house and he made himself comfortable at one of the tables. He drew out a notebook and re-annotated the second draft of the peace agreement Corel and Costa Del Sol were debating.

It shouldn't have been his problem, and yet it consistently had been for the last two years. Neither towns, now city-states, had been founded or conquered by Shinra. But a significant number of people who had gotten wealthy off of Shinra and avoided arrest had fled with their millions to their Costa holidays homes and now how the gall to try and play him against Corel in a bid to reclaim power. But the local impoverished populations of both cities genuinely did need help. Food production, supply lines, and monster number were all a mess. They had asked him to help, brandishing their needy at him.

He heard the scrape of Tifa pushing slabs of beer across the floor in the walk-in fridge.

They would reject his amendments to the second draft, just as they did the first. It was a game to them.

Disgust weighed on him.

He could use their rejection against them: plant conditions in it that would reflect poorly on them to turn aside. Trap them in clever wording to wield in future negotiations and shape the political landscape in the long term.

He was struggling to remember why he cared enough to bother. He had only ever wanted to topple Shinra for the things they had done to him.

This was not his mess. They had brought him in for no other reason than to take advantage of him.

The wooden shelves creaked: Tifa lining up new liquor bottles behind the bar.

The two cities were setting up the lines for a fight in which the intended to make him a pawn indefinitely. It would never stop. They were no better than Shinra.

But nobody ever had been. Shinra was not some outside influence: it was only ever humanity, being itself.

He recognised the train of thought within him. He observed it, savoured it for just a moment, and then silenced it.

Dulls thuds from ice bags being thrown into the freezer. She was visible through the open door to the kitchen, pausing in her task to push her hair back from her face.

He could stand up and help. She would reject the offer. Not simply because she didn't need it, but the isolation was intentional. She was gearing herself up to face him.

She looked around, hands on her hips, surveying her territory.

If he let her stew she'd end up jumpier, snappier, and easier to goad. Still determined but vicious to make up for her bubbling old fears.

Whereas if he interrupted, all her defences would go up before her self-doubt could gnaw at them, and she would face him, unyielding. That bone-deep anger that surfaced so rarely these days would stare back at him from her beautiful eyes.

There was an appeal to that. Seeing that terrible knowledge from the only person who knew. But she would also take no bait and make him work harder for any reaction.

He didn't interrupt.

She hauled a box of wine onto the bar and started lining them up next to the glassware. She squared her shoulders and planted her feet squarely. Then slowly she hunched down into herself again. She scowled at nothing and moved faster.

He crossed his ankles, letting his heel drag on the wood. Her head tilted to follow the sound.

He wondered what the delay before they launched into each other down did to him. She probably took it into account when she asked him to wait.

She tucked her head down, tilted slightly towards the arch of her fringe. That usually meant she was keeping something to herself and feeling self-conscious about it. Interesting. He would have to ask her about it later.

Finally, she finished up and reappeared with her bag and coat over her arm.

They didn't say anything on the drive back to his house, their eyes only just grazing each other. A winter storm blew in off the ocean and rain started to tap against the windscreen. Tifa leaned down in her seat to adjust her shoelace. He stared at the road.

She got out her gloves and slowly, carefully pulled them down over her graceful fingers. The armoured leather creaked in the quiet.

Only when they pulled up into his garage did he turn and face her. She looked back, expression determined and simmering with restrained emotion. Excitement. Resentment. Anticipation. Anger.

He heard her heartbeat pick up speed. His did the same.

He opened the door for her. She walked in without hesitation and lead him down to the training room. He followed her silently, unbuckling his sword.

Outside the rain turned torrential, thundering against the reinforced floor to ceiling windows. A flash of lightning illuminated the churning ocean and black sky.

They faced each other in the muffled isolation of the dimly lit room, cut off from the rest of the world. Her stance was deceptively relaxed, but he could see the tension in her neck tendons and how lightly she stood, ready to leap back at any moment. He stood at ease, knowing how much it would irritate her.

She scowled at him. He waited.

She struck first, immediately closing the distance between them, fists flying. He blocked. She struck again, again, and again. They traded blows, and his blood ignited. Her eyes were bright in the dark. Her fist grazed his cheekbone.

He swept her feet out from under her. She caught herself and rolled away. He pressed his advantage, stalking after her.

She ducked, weaved, retreated, then launched forward. She grabbed the lapels of his coat and used his momentum to hurl him across the room. He flipped and landed on his feet, tossing the coat off.

She flew after him, a kick aimed at his head. He ducked and grabbed her raised leg, holding it up. He knocked the other one out from under her. She held herself up by his grip on her and kicked him in the head. He dropped her.

She flipped to kick him under the chin, but he threw himself back before it could connect. He launched forward again just as she landed on her feet.

He caught her by the throat and slammed her against the window. Snarling, she locked her legs around his waist and grabbed at his head, yanking him forward to smash his face against the glass. He caught himself just before impact. She struggled to throw him off with her legs alone, but he was much stronger than her.

"You needn't try so hard, Tifa," he whispered into her ear. "You know you prefer it when I win."

"Fuck you, Sephiroth," she hissed.

He leaned against her, trapped her between his body and the glass. Her breath stuttered at the contact and it took effort to stop his from doing the same. He took her hand from his hair and braced it against the window over her head.

"Tell me to stop then. Kick me off." His hand caressing her throat. Her body burned against his. His heart thundered in his ribcage.

"Tell me," he said, kissing the soft spot under her ear that made her whimper, "that you don't want me."

She twitched her hips, and growled at him. "No."

He covered her lips with his own. She surged up into him.

She was shirtless and his trousers were open by the time he flipped her around, holding her to him with his arm around her waist.

The dark glass reflected the image back at them, superimposed over the storm. His other hand was slick and curling in time to her panting breath. Her head leaned back on his shoulder. Her legs, firmly planted to hold herself against him, started to tremble.

He traced the scar down her chest, from collarbone to waist. The cacophony of emotions it always brought out in him surged: possession, protectiveness, shame, jealousy, pride. It all swirled in a heady cocktail he didn't want to face under any circumstance but when she was making soft noises in his arms.

Her hooded eyes met his in the reflection, a mess of accusation and gratitude, fury and yearning. So strong, so precious. Something infinitely tender replaced the mess of darker emotions within him. She turned her head enough to kiss him.

He doubted he would ever tell her he loved her, but he did. Planet, he did. She came apart under his hands.

He pulled her down to lie on the mats and rose over her.

"I want to be on top," she murmured, wrapping her legs around him to try for a flip.

"Then you should have fought harder," he said with a smirk, lifting her hips up to meet him.

Her responding laugh turned into a moan.

Sometime later Tifa leaned her forehead against his. She could feel the racing beat of his heart against her chest. He was breathing hard, his eyes still closed. The slight glow of them reflected on his cheeks. She sat astride him on the bed and felt very proud of herself.

She remembered what day it was and wondered what right she had to be here. She breathed out and pecked his lips. She was here. Right or not.

Sephiroth groaned and chased her lips.

"What is it?" he asked.

"What?"

"Whatever it is you're being quiet about."

She looked away. He massaged her thighs and waited out her silence. Her knees were going to start complaining about the stress she had put them under soon.

"It's the anniversary of the day the plate fell," she whispered. They were still forehead to forehead, shrouded behind sweat-slicked fringes, but she didn't meet his eye. "Will fall. Would have fallen. Two years from now."

"The plate fell? Separate from the meteor?"

"This was earlier, and just sector 7. We'd blown up a reactor and Shinra knew we were hiding somewhere in the sector, but… they didn't know where."

"It fell," he asked, his voice low, "or it was dropped?"

"Dropped." She met his glowing eyes. "Reno set the explosives and beat us to a pulp when we tried to stop him."

His hands kept squeezing her thighs, but he offered her no words of comfort. No absolution. It made her feel a little better.

"I forgot," she said, wearing a weak, guilty smile. She shook her head at herself. "I fought those two and it didn't even occur to me what day it was until they were gone."

"What happened next? After the drop?"

"We got caught." She leaned her head back, looking to the ceiling. "We were locked up in the Shinra tower waiting to be interrogated and executed until… he came back."

His hands grew still on her thighs.

Her eyes dropped to his. She waited for him to ask.

He didn't ask.

He kissed her neck, and the subject died. She kissed his temple then pushed him to lie down.

Sometimes honesty was facing the things that hurt. Sometimes it was knowing what not to trust yourself with. They curled around each other, and went to sleep.

Tifa woke first.

She crawled out of the warmth of the bed, grudgingly, and went and brewed a pot of coffee. She knew he woke with her movement, but he stayed in bed in what was now a comfortable tradition of the-morning-after alone time.

She sat on a little window seat overlooking the city and enjoyed the quiet. The storm had spent its vehemence in the night but it would be a dreary day of intermittent rain. The sun had risen but even if it breached the clouds it wouldn't reach down into the west-facing slope of the city for another hour. The grey clouds were touched with just a hint of gold.

With her knees pulled up to her chest and coffee steaming in her hands, she sighed in contentment.

The first time she had stayed over the sunrise had been interrupt by the shadow of the canon. It had since been decommissioned and taken down. It was still a military city, the SOLDER base remained and the airfield hadn't seen any drop in activity.

Sephiroth led the increasingly small armed forces, but he was more an untethered ambassador to everywhere from everywhere. When he was irritating her she liked to accuse him of being a politician. He spent large chunks of the year travelling, months at a time off doing thankless work with unpleasant company. But he hadn't stopped being a military leader. SOLDIER couldn't be easily disbanded, not with the medical complications intrinsic to the rank and many wouldn't leave even when Sephiroth offered.

Those who had left, a tremendous number given the sheer size of Shinra's military, were offered parcels of land. Shinra had owned so much and left it unused, especially on the eastern continent. Now it gave homes and employment to the disenfranchised and helped the global movement of land reclaim: trying to nurse Mako wastelands back into arable land again. The planet's recovery was slow but ongoing.

She looked out at the view, tiers of houses marching down into the water, all damp and soggy and grey. She struggled to think of it as her world sometimes. It was so Other to her, it had changed in ways she didn't really understand. The populations were so flabbergasted over things like the non-violent fall of Shinra and the sudden abandonment of Mako Power. Many looked at Sephiroth with a sense of betrayal. She tried not to resent them for the luxury of thinking this was what betrayal looked like.

The price of fixing it before it was irrevocably broken, she supposed. Nobody else had to know how high the stakes were. That was alright.

She stretched out her legs and leaned forward to touch her toes. It had been an intense night.

She smiled, drained the last of the mug, and went and had a shower.

He had risen by the time she got out and they swapped places. They shared a comfortable breakfast together before going their separate ways for the day. The burdened intensity in his eyes had quietened from the previous night, she was glad to see.

It came and went over the next couple of months.

The Western Continent peace talks dragged on, and dragged Sephiroth further in every step of the way. She saw the gridlocked process on the news and talked about it with him over the phone. She knew many of the major players, even if they were very different people now.

Costa del Sol pushed for more and more and more. Their well-paid militia was purely for defensive purposes, they said, and if people didn't like them patrolling the edges of Corel's territory, well, that wasn't their problem. She was biased, Barrett was one of Corel's negotiators, but it all struck her as very Shinra of them.

She turned on the TV in the bar one day at a customer's request and saw Sephiroth and fire.

Costa's barracks and one of the wealthiest suburbs, all largely empty at the time of ignition according to the newsfeed scrolling the bottom of the screen, wreathed in flames.

There were gasps and gossip and conjecture throughout the room, staff and patrons claiming shock or lack thereof.

She watched, nailed to the spot. The footage looped. Filmed at a distance and blurry from the heat, he walked patiently through the field of fire, uncaring for who saw. Silver hair and black leather floated unharmed in the waves of heat.

She had forgotten how bone-chilling it was.

She looked down at her hands. She'd unthinkingly put her gloves on.

The footage was hours old, no longer breaking news but a matter of discussion amid the newscasters. She didn't listen to any of it.

She patted her bar manager on the shoulder and in a numb haze marched into the wine cellar and called him.

He picked up on the second ring.

"Are you going to end the world?" she asked, and it all felt so surreal that her voice came out detached and curious.

He paused long enough she couldn't tell if he was shocked at the question or deliberating over the answer.

"No."

She closed her eyes and took in a big gulp of air. "Okay."

She hung up.

Her hands shook. She stood in the cellar long enough that her staff came and checked on her. She told them to hold down the fort for the evening and she made for the city limits. She past the walls, past the tame lands, and into the monster-ridden wilderness where she could fight something. It was a long enough walk for the shock to wear off, and she had to contend with her reaction to the situation. Her gloves creaked against the knuckles of her clenched fists.

Her phone rang. She didn't look at the ID because she knew who it was and if she looked she might not answer.

"Can I see you tonight?" Sephiroth asked. His tone gave away very little.

She breathed in slowly and did her own deliberation. She let the breath back out.

"Yes."

"Where are you?"

"In the grasslands. Past the cliffs."

It was his turn to hang up on her.

A group of Capparwires had snuck up on her. She blocked their opening attack, then unleashed herself upon them.

He looked calm and collected when he found her, still fighting her way through monsters. He stood on the side of the beaten-down battleground and watched her without comment.

She dodged a strike and retaliated with a flurry of blows, trying not to let him distract her.

Two timelines worth of competing instincts yelled at her about his presence, telling her to ignore the low levelled monsters and go punch him instead, to give him a hug, to run away and get back up, to go stare into his eyes. She ignored it all. She kept tearing through her targets.

The last monster fell.

"You know," she said, looking around for more monster to fight. "If you'd just ignored me from the beginning and did everything Jenova wanted, it wouldn't have hurt me. I was used to that then. Numb to it." She resolutely didn't look at him, but she still caught the way his head moved to watch her in her peripheral vision. "Even seeing Nibelheim burn again… I would have just left to rally people to stop you."

"And now?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Now… I'd miss you." There was nothing to fight. She lowered her fists and her shoulders sank. "Hating you didn't use to hurt."

"Do you hate me?"

She looked resolutely at the dirt. "Yes."

"You promised to never lie to me, Tifa," he reminded her gently.

"No. I don't." She looked up at him. "That hurts too."

He looked about as lost as she felt.

"What I did in Costa was a strategic decision, not an emotionally driven one," he said.

"So was ending the world." She looked at the stack of dead monsters she had taken her emotions out on. "I've never known you to do anything that wasn't a strategic decision."

"Loving you wasn't."

Her head snapped back to him. He was looking at the monsters now.

"Turning on humanity does not benefit me or anyone I care about," he said. "Depriving Costa's wealthy of a constant supply of mercenaries with which to threaten the western continent does."

She stared at him. "Do you?"

"Yes."

They finally stopped dodging eye contact. She felt anew the stab of vulnerability of how much it would hurt if he really did turn on her now. How utterly unprepared she was to let go of him let alone face him in any serious manner. She saw the same devastating vulnerability in his eyes.

She closed the distance between them. She leaned her head on his chest. He put his arms around her.

"I'm sorry I freaked out."

"I understand," he said.

"Is there going to be a war with Costa?"

"Now there won't be."

She nodded. "You smell like ash."

"It's my hair." She knew. She remembered it catching in her own. She looked up at him.

"I love you," she said. "Please don't leave me."

He held her closer and cradled the back of her neck in a crushing hug.

"I won't."

After a time they headed back to the city. They walked easier than they had on the trek out, both a little less tight around the eyes.

Monsters ambushed them, they ended them soundly. It was nothing grand or dramatic, just a quiet sharing of something that softened the blow of declarations said out loud. When they stood outside the city gates, he pulled her close and they shared breath for a long moment.

He would fly back to the Western continent again that night but intended to return by the next weekend. Somehow it managed to feel normal. They agreed on their plans and then re-entered the city together, committed to their lives and the choices they had made.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews are always welcome.