Sephiroth looked up from his computer, distracted by the sound of the bedroom door opening.
Ah, Tifa was awake.
It was mid morning on a Monday and he was trading unnecessarily sarcastic emails with Genesis over the decommissioning of the Midgar plate. Timid sunlight broke through the clouds from time to time to drape across the airy living room. The high coastal winds made the potted palm trees rustle and slap against the windows, but inside it was peaceful, and just about time for a second cup of coffee.
Tifa drifted down the stairs, scrubbing a hand down her face and wearing a loose robe over the shorts and singlet she slept in. Sephiroth smiled at the sight. She worked late on weekends and, in his opinion, didn't sleep enough to make up for it.
"Good morning," he said. He leaned back in his chair and hugged her waist as she hugged his upper half and kissed the top of his head. "How did you sleep?"
"Mmm morning. And good," she replied, yawning. "You? How's…" she wiggled her fingers at his screen.
"Genesis is being difficult. Reeve wants me to deal with it."
She laughed. "Reeve wants a lot of things."
She grabbed his empty coffee cup and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back a few minutes later with two steaming cups and a plate of toast for herself. She curled up on the couch and flipped through the catalogue for her liquor suppliers.
They had been together for roughly four years now, Shinra's having been toppled for five, and the two had long since found a comfortable equilibrium together. Co-habitating was still a recent development though, one that both had been nervous about. Then they finally moved in together and their worries turned out to have been redundant. They kept a bed in the spare room for whenever one of them suddenly found physical contact abhorrent or just wanted to toss and turn through their nightmares in peace, but it had been used far less than he expected. Tifa overlooked his habit of eating directly over the sink and he refrained from pointing out the abandoned pairs of earrings she left everywhere. They did argue over the correct way to load the dishwasher.
They rarely argued over things that happened in a different timeline now. Not that either had forgotten, but as time passed it just didn't come up very often.
He watched her stretch forward to touch her toes before launching into her morning stretch routine, her eyes half closed.
"Does the name 'Deepground' mean anything to you?" he asked.
Her eyes snapped open.
"It shouldn't exist yet. It wasn't founded until-" she stopped. "What have you found?" She unfolded from her stretching position and turned to face him.
He frowned. "Just old financial reports. We're sifting through Shinra's building records from the plate's construction, but there was no more information attached, other than Hojo's name."
"I didn't think it was that old. None of the records we found said..." She put a hand over her mouth. She looked away and swore.
He stood up. "What is it? What is Deepground?"
She told him.
He leaned forward on the bench, his head bowed.
"Is there no end to it?" he asked.
She scowled at nothing. "Apparently not. What will you do?"
"The same as every other lab we've found. I'll have to go in and clear it out. Open it to the sky."
"It was massive, Sephiroth." She sighed. "Bigger than the one in the Shinra building, it stretched for miles, buried under the city. Assuming Hojo had time to move in there before Shinra's end?"
"I don't know. I'll tell Vincent and the others, we need to move quickly."
He gripped his temples, thinking through all he would need to do. Tifa picked up her now empty coffee cup and stood listlessly in the middle of the living room, her robe slipped down from one shoulder.
"It would be easier if you came with us," he said, quietly.
Her fingers tightened on the cup. "Easier?"
"You have the benefit of hindsight." She hadn't volunteered her knowledge of the future for anyone besides him, and he preferred it that way. She'd saved the world enough times, she was his time traveler and the rest of the world couldn't have her. That had been an easier position to defend when they both thought the rest of her knowledge of the future was obsolete.
"I wouldn't have thought to look under the city itself. You know what they were hiding and where. Which records are false."
The skin around her eyes tightened. "I don't want to go to Midgar."
"I know."
"I already dug up Deepground once. It was hard enough the first time."
He nodded. She scowled at the ground.
"Please."
She sighed. "Fine."
Tifa didn't recognise Midgar.
It was still standing, for one. That was good. She should be proud of that: it's survival was a testament to her success, which was a very Sephiroth spin on it.
They flew from Junon in a tiny airship, and as they broke through the clouds the first thing she saw was blocky fields of shiny solar panels. They stretched for miles along the plains, while in wandering ranks along the cliff tops perched towering wind turbines.
The rotting pizza was no more. All but three sectors of the plate had been decommissioned, sector by sector, although the scaffoldings and redundant pillars still stood. The outer walls had been torn down and new suburbs sprawled beyond its limits, far beyond where Edge would never be.
The city didn't glow anymore either. All but one of the reactors had been decommissioned, and that one was working at its lowest output, never firing noxious green discharge into the air.
It wasn't pretty. Steel and concrete still dominated the landscape, but hints of greenery slunk back in. Not much, the tree planting initiative in the plains struggled, but there were parks visible from the air.
Tifa stared out the window, one hand on the glass. She hadn't expected it to look so different. The Shinra tower remained, proud and ugly like she hadn't seen since Diamond weapon. The damage the city hadn't taken was somehow just as shocking as the growth.
Behind her Sephiroth sat relaxed with his arms crossed. He saw it all the time. He was responsible for a significant portion of it.
"You did a good job," she said. "Fixed it up real nice."
He put a gentle hand on her back. "I wasn't fighting someone trying to destroy the planet every step of the way."
"Yeah, well. You probably would have figured it out even if you had been."
"Feeling sorry for yourself, Tifa?" he asked, not unkindly.
She cracked a smile. "Maybe a little." She sobered a second later as the airship circled over the city proper. "Do we have to go in through sector 7?"
"It's the most stable entrance. Vincent and Genesis will meet us there."
It was one of the sectors that had been opened first, that slice of the pizza removed. The sunlight reached down between the plates on either side. It must have been like living at the bottom of a well.
Tifa let out a shaky breath. Sephiroth's hand on her back was a steadying comfort.
They landed on the outskirts and drove in towards the deactivated Reactor 0 beneath the Shinra building. Tifa had tried not to stare out the windows too much but couldn't help herself. It was all so different, and yet not different at all, playing tricks on her memories. There were paved roads bathed in sunlight, real sunlight. They followed the layout of the slums but they weren't really slums at all anymore. The majority of the shacks of corrugated iron, scraps and tarpaulins were gone and more stable buildings stood in their place.
A knot formed in her stomach and her hands formed into useless fists. Sephiroth silently drove them closer and closer to the cluster of streets she had once known so well. Maybe it wouldn't be there. Maybe it had all been wiped away and replaced with some new restaurant good enough for this sunny modern world.
It was all wrong. It felt the same as the false Nibelheim village that Shinra rebuilt. An imposter smiling in place of a terrible tragedy.
Only it wasn't an imposter. It was the real thing, finally allowed to thrive. Did that make her the imposter?
Sephiroth took a corner and there it was, Seventh Heaven, standing like a beacon. She put a hand on his arm, not looking back. He pulled over without question.
She stared at it. It hadn't kept pace with the neighbourhood's rejuvenation, the old bar showing its years in discoloured weatherboards and rain streaked awnings. Ghosts haunted it in her mind's eye, replacing the morning sun with eternal grimy night. Somewhere Marlene laughed and called for her daddy. Somewhere Cloud was pretending to be a mercenary in a SOLDIER's uniform.
"Do you want to go in?" Sephiroth asked.
She swallowed. "We'll be late."
"We have time."
She wrestled her eyes away, staring down at the road before them instead. She'd promised herself they wouldn't get side tracked, they would go in, excavate Deepground, and then go home. She'd been kidding herself. She bowed her head.
"We've come all this way. I don't think I'd forgive myself if I hid in the car."
"Do you need a little time?" Sephiroth asked.
A strangled laugh burst from her. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
"No." Goddess, it was all so absurd. She'd never said goodbye to this place last time, it had just been torn from her unceremoniously. She pulled herself up and shook her head. "No. I've had enough time. Let's go face our problems."
She opened the door and stepped out.
There was a scraggly flowering weed sticking out of concrete. She smiled at it, then braced herself and looked up again.
It wasn't Seventh Heaven. It couldn't be, in a world where both Corel and Nibelheim were still standing. It was still the failing nautical themed joint it had been before her and Barret took it over.
The Floating Anchor, the sign proudly proclaimed it, in blue and white. The little sign above it still said 'Have a Great Day!' with pleasant optimism though.
"Why would an anchor float?" Sephiroth asked at her side, with the voice he used when he thought something was stupid but didn't want to risk being rude.
A very slight smile tugged at her face. "It is a terrible name."
She hauled in a breath, prepared for an emotional onslaught, and climbed the stairs. She pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside.
It didn't hurt nearly as much as she thought it would.
A bored waiter showed them to a table where they sat on barrels. Dusty little lifesavers on a stick declared they were sitting at table 3. Sephiroth stood to fetch them water.
Tifa looked around skeptically. She leafed through the menu in front of her.
"Why do they have a million menu items?" she asked under her breath. "No way they have so many types of steak on hand, not when they're this quiet." No wonder the place wasn't doing well.
She'd made the same mistakes once. In the early days Seventh Heaven had been poorly run and poorly laid out by people who didn't really know what they were doing. Whose focus was on the pain they had endured and the revenge they wanted for it. It was a coping strategy first and a bar second.
She looked around the haphazard place, neglected and dusty.
She had grown beyond it.
It was a curious realisation. Something old and mangled inside of her readjusted itself slightly.
Sephiroth looked uncomfortable and the few other patrons stared at him. It wasn't how she remembered it.
The waiter disappeared into the smoko room they had turned into Avalanche's secret headquarters behind the jukebox, a cigarette already in hand. Tifa smiled. She had forgotten how badly it stank of smoke down there. It was part of why Cid had felt like a good fit despite being so obnoxious: he smelled like rebellion.
Sephiroth returned with two water glasses, silver hair and black streaming behind him, and looking wildly out of place. He sat opposite her at the table where Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge used to play cards. It was the weirdest thing she'd seen since coming back in time.
There was no reconciling the rage of her younger self, to whom Nibelheim was the worst thing that could happen, her shame at how it ended, and the numbing scar that time scabbed it all over with. She felt like such a jumbled mess, she may as well have Sephiroth saunter through this place that couldn't exist, largely sane and providing her with emotional support.
She snorted a laugh. What else could she do?
"Let's get out of here," she said.
Sephiroth nodded, and they got back up and headed out into the sun.
She felt lighter as she got back into the car, marginally more at peace.
He drove them up to the entrance to Deepground.
There was no more peace to be had that day.
Sephiroth led the descent into Deepground.
The tunnels leading into it were labyrinthine and dangerous, with rusted old security checkpoints and automated defences that were certainly not company approved. He cut through them.
The pipes of the giant, aging reactor groaned and dripped around them. The air stank of rust and stagnant Mako.
Genesis walked behind him, then came Tifa, wearing a gas mask and whispering directions, and Vincent brought up the rear.
He was certain that the other two had figured out what she was by now, but it was never discussed. Genesis had seen the younger, mountain guide version and gave the two of them narrow eyed looks from time to time. Whatever he thought he knew, he was smart enough to never bring it up and misdirected when other parties asked prying questions.
Vincent he suspected knew with more certainty, as Tifa had tentatively found a friend in him again. One of the few details she confided in Sephiroth of the disastrous final years of the other future was that Vincent lasted longer than all her other friends and comrades. They had supported each other as the world burned. She never discussed whether the mechanism of time travel had unmade her last friends or if she simply left them behind, alone, on a dying planet.
She knew the answer, and given the chasm that never quite closed between them, so did Vincent.
The group spoke quietly as they walked. The site had been forgotten for so long there wasn't much risk of finding any specimes still alive, but monsters bred in reactors left unattended.
At last they found the entrance.
They unsealed the forgotten city, and all fell silent.
It was, in all respects, everything he expected of one of Hojo's labs, just the most extreme version. None of them had the luxury of being shocked, but it had been a long time since a new lab had been discovered and they'd had to deal with Shinra's sins.
It was ugly and painful.
Sephiroth ended up working with Genesis as they combed through records, Mako tanks, and specimens cages. Their friendship was a bruised and scarred old thing, but they worked well together when it mattered. Methodical and numb, they waded through the horrors.
The specimens had been left to rot in Mako solutions and strung up on various apparatuses. All had been left exactly as they were when he tore down Shinra five years ago.
So few of Shinra's crimes surprised him. He was intimately acquainted with many of them before he even knew they were illegal. He had a high tolerance level, but it had been some time. He had thought the years of distance and peace had brought some acceptance. He had thought they had purged this.
Some of the specimens were still alive. Tifa knew some of their names. They did what they could for them. Most had turned mad and monstrous and could not be passively subdued. He blinked dispassionately and got the job done. It took weeks.
The new Midgar government didn't condone executions, he recalled as they dug and dug through the massive lab. Ex-President Shinra had written a best selling tell-all memoir from house arrest. Hojo was sitting comfortably in a cell out in the countryside, and publishing revolutionary biology and chemistry papers just to pass the time. The injustice burned at him.
The others took breaks. He kept on ploughing through, determined to get it done.
Finally Tifa hauled him away and shoved food into his hands. He didn't want to go back while work remained, forgotten abominations forgotten still in their tanks of Mako solution. Tifa wasn't having it.
The sky was dark when he stepped out of the reactor.
They came back the next day and did it all again.
In the middle of the night, Tifa woke up.
She looked over her shoulder.
Sephiroth sat in silence on the end of the bed.
She pulled herself to sit up, blinking in the dark.
They were a week into the excavation and staying in Sephiroth's spartan Midgar apartment. She had slept like the dead and dreamed of a dead world since arriving in the city. Sephiroth barely slept at all but he cared enough to go along with her insistence that he try.
She rubbed her eyes and shuffled closer. His back was straight and he stared at the blank wall directly ahead of him. She wasn't sure how close to get, it might have been one of those nights when he didn't want to be touched. She wasn't about to leave him alone though.
She turned and sat with her back lightly pressed against his. His skin was warm through her night shirt.
He didn't move. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them.
"Do you think I'm a monster?" he asked.
"No."
"I had to be put down in another life," he said, voice devoid of any emotion.
"There's nothing wrong with you. What was done to you was monstrous." She looked over her shoulder.
He bowed his head. "I am what was done to me."
"No, you're not."
"Then why are you afraid of me?" he asked quietly.
She scowled. "I am not."
He turned his head enough to give her a sceptical look she had always despised.
She turned herself around and wrapped an arm around his middle, ignoring the slight flinch, and putting her mouth by his ear.
"I wouldn't be in your bed if I was afraid of you."
He turned in her arms and loomed over her, forcing her to fall onto her back on the bed.
"Wouldn't you, Tifa?" he asked, because he was a masochist and always wanted to uncover all the worst possible truths to stab himself with. She wasn't going to have it.
She wrapped her legs around him and flipped him over. He cradled the back of her head as she did so.
"You were hurt," she said, her hands on either side of his head on the bed. Glowing green eyes looked up at her in the dark. "You were used by heartless monsters who don't care about anything but themselves, you did what you had to to survive. None of that makes you a monster." She wanted to hug him, to do something to show him how much she cared, but wasn't sure what would help.
Instead she rolled back off of him. He didn't like to be smothered and she didn't want to be telling him how to feel.
He chased her, mutely picking her up and putting her in his lap as he sat up. She put her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder.
Taut, intimate silence blanketed them. His hands flexed against her shoulder.
"Did the other Sephiroth get to kill Hojo?" he asked, eventually.
She shook her head. "Vincent did it." She looked up at him. He was staring at the wall again. "He did kill the president though."
He nodded slowly. He let out a deep breath.
"I am filled with hatred, Tifa," he rasped, helpless. "I thought I'd dealt with it, but it's still there, as strong as it always was. I can't dig it out of me."
Her grip on him tightened.
"I want to see them burn. I want to be the monster they made me into, because why should they be spared the consequences?"
"I… I don't know," she whispered.
"Don't you?" he replied. It sounded like both a plea and a challenge. "You're invested in my not being a monster."
She bowed her head. She had chased down her own revenge regardless of the cost. She'd never come to terms with whether or not she should have.
"When I saw the president speared to his desk by Masamune…" she admitted into the dark, "...I was glad."
Glowing green eyes finally fixed on her. "Were you?"
"I didn't blow up reactors because I cared about the planet. Not really. I just hated Shinra."
"Why did you stop?"
"Because it didn't do anything. They just deflected and everyone else paid the price." She shrugged and looked away. She was caught in a curtain of silver hair and strong arms. It had turned comforting somewhere along the way. "I don't know how to stop being angry either. But I… I'm not going to destroy myself for them. I won't give them the satisfaction."
"You give me the satisfaction," he said, his voice low.
"That's different."
"Is it?" He put a hand on jaw and guided her back to look at him. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep but as hyper-focused as always. "How can you let me do the things I do to you?"
she swallowed. "Some days are easier than others."
He ran a hand back through her hair, holding her head still in his grasp. She felt the cold pit of anger and hatred deep inside of her, exactly where she last left it. He searched her face for it.
"I've killed you so many times," she said.
"How did it feel?"
"Good, the first time. You went down hard."
"And after that?"
"Diminishing returns. I didn't feel any less hateful when you were gone."
He pulled her to himself in a hard embrace and buried his head in her neck. She held him just as tight, burying one hand in his hair and the other splayed across his wing-less back.
"How do you live with yourself?" he asked into her ear.
"What else am I supposed to do?" she hissed back. She pushed him back enough to look in his eyes again. "Aren't we allowed to feel our own anger? To grieve? Aren't we allowed to be happy?"
"'Allowed?'" He was quiet for a long time, searching her eyes for she didn't know what.
"No. We don't need permission," he said in a voice she had last heard declaring Gaia to be his.
He held her close and rolled them over back into the bed. They held each other until the dawn.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews are always welcome.