A/N: I started this ten whole years ago. TEN. After some revision, I decided I guess I'd post it. It's a short story, and it desperately needs a beta and/or someone other than me to look over it, but this was a good exercise for me to give myself! I hope some of you enjoy. Happy reading! As always, any criticism, thoughts, love, hate are all welcome.

BURST AND BLOOM

i.

Tifa never did like being dependent on someone, especially when they were always too generous with how much they would give.

When she was taken under Godo's wing, it felt wrong. She didn't belong in the palace, and she didn't belong living like royalty. Before then, she'd never been in contact with so many rich, expensive cloths and jewels and privileges in her life. Luckily, when she voiced her discomfort, Yuffie understood.

"I run away a lot," she started saying one day, when they were out in the gardens, flicking rocks across the koi pond. "I can't stand living here, sometimes."

"Why?" Tifa asked. "You've got it all. You were born with it. Don't you want it?"

"Ya know, Teef," she said, grinning, "I don't like watching my people die in poverty while I'm stuck on a bed of gold coins. My dad thinks by keeping me locked in a tower, he'll protect me from all the bad, dirty things out there." She scoffs. "As if I can learn how to lead without knowing how our people live."

"Is that why you brought me here?"

Yuffie looked at her with a bit of thought. "Maybe," she evaded. Then she leaned in, deviousness invading the smirk on her lips. "Listen. I've been thinking about leaving for a while. Longer than I've been going. We can leave together, if you want. We can watch each other's backs. We don't have to rely on any one but ourselves."

That's when Tifa was thankful—more thankful than she'd ever been. Here was a friend, someone she knew she could trust without paranoia or loose fidelity. This girl, Yuffie, was for keeps.

Wutai was a big place. A big country. It was built up with subsections, towns and cities inside a wall of unity. Yuffie's and Tifa's boundaries were limitless, and as big as Wutai was, its boundaries were not as infinite as theirs.

One morning, it was decided. They hitchhiked to a ferry, snuck on board, and hid behind crates in the cargo hold. A week later, they were back on solid land.

Once they were, they began doing what they did best. Yuffie's was pickpocketing. Tifa's was stealing.

Tifa did not steal noticeable items. It only consisted of the coaxing of little things—necessary things. Food, water, clothes. Yuffie pickpocketed gil and trinkets—the required objects to sell and barter off.

They were truly thick as thieves. They found places to sleep in the dingiest parts of the city, the places where guns would shoot and women would faintly cry behind closed wooden doors, waiting for their husband, lover, whoever to come back to them, or for them to never show their faces again. These places were the parts where nobody would suspect them of anything. It disguised them and made them inconspicuous.

Sometimes it was hard, but what else were they supposed to do, being seventeen and eighteen, poor, homeless and needy? It didn't pass Tifa's mind that Yuffie was none of those things. Yuffie had everything Tifa had always desired, and she threw it all away for life on the street. It was all for the independence her father never gave her because he loved her too much.

Tifa had always been jealous of it. She had seen Godo, watched him keenly like a person watches a stranger hiding in shadowed corners. He was stern, and harsh, and sometimes he would be impossibly stubborn, never listening to Yuffie's requests and never giving her the benefit of the doubt.

But underneath it was a bucket of love, gilded with a golden border, richer than all the gold in Wutai. Yuffie didn't see it. Tifa knew she wouldn't, even if she told her. It was something she'd have to figure out herself.

Yuffie was foolhardy. She was never one to think things through in consequential situations. Someday, if she didn't learn soon, she'd get both of them killed. She'd mess with the wrong people, throw her shruiken at the wrong guy. What was a circle full of spikes versus a magazine of bullets?

So Tifa followed her, never let her do the harder jobs on her own. Neither could afford it, though Yuffie would get angry and annoyed at all the nagging, at the godmother role Tifa seemed to be playing.

"Once you prove to me that you can make better decisions on your own," Tifa had said, "I'll stop coming to the market with you."

The black market held a lot of valuable items unable to be bartered anywhere else. It held untraceable weapons and valuable pieces of information over different levels of society. Some sold unrefined mako, mako crystals, and materia—every distinctive brand of poison to satisfy all the variable needs of the people.

They'd been a few times with Tifa leading. She wore her brass knuckles underneath her gloves, so as not to bring them unnecessary attention. Yuffie was good at fighting, better than Tifa had anticipated, but Tifa had more experience with people who were serious and pissed off and didn't care if you died. It was different than trainers in the royal palace.

She purposefully strode up to an owner of a small time mako refining industry. The man could have been her father, in his mid to late forties. He had a beer belly and gray hairs peppering his beard. He smelled of sweat and metal, sitting across his own set up of wares—mako enhanced gloves, swords, guns. Metal on metal on leather, buckles and clasps and circlets. Mako did all kinds of things to weapons, and people, if you're lucky enough to find the right dealer. The man boasted about administering mako to prominent figures in the top tier, having luxurious clientele, and a list of names he'd love to give away for the right price.

"Have you ever seen your clientele injected with pure mako?" Tifa asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Several," he said, giving her a seedy glance. "Have you?"

"Not in a very long time."

"Well, you may be surprised. You're looking at one."

She told him, quite arrogantly, that he was a liar. He tried again to make her believe, showing her the wasted creases of his elbows, his skinny veins popping out of his skin. It was a bland show of bravado. She told him she was unimpressed.

He became angry quickly, and when he lunged, Tifa dodged, ducking under his closing arms. She landed a solid jab across his jaw. He swung blindly. She roundhouse kicked him in his gut. The impact had him sprawled on the floor, coughing for breath.

She always liked the sounds of a fight, all the cracks people made. It made her feel like she was in control of something purposeful and important.

Tifa reached over into his stand, lined with all the junk he'd been going on and on about. She felt for the hum of mako with her fingers and felt an empty chill. "This isn't enhanced."

He spat onto the concrete. The floor was already dirty with dried mud and grime from wandering boots, and his spit was unnoticeable.

"What do you know about mako, you little bitch?"

Tifa raised a fist above her head, a deep blue ball coalescing around her knuckles and fingertips. She wasn't going to do this, today, but she wanted to watch his face. Having the ability to make a man's condescension disappear was a powerful gift, and Tifa relished it.

"I know enough."

The man on the floor cowered in shock. "What…you're...but how?"

Tifa grinned darkly down at him. The reactions were always the same. Always fearful, always shocked and cornered. They thought she was a killer with a glowing hand. What else would she be good at? What else would she use the mutation for, if not breaking bones and taking lives? Nothing was as unsettling as a girl filled with bloodlust and poison.

"How else?" Then she leaned over before he could scramble away on his feet and hands, just like a crab, and punched him on the temple, knocking him out cold.

When Yuffie first learned about Tifa's abilities, she pleasantly surprised Tifa. She didn't cower away or look at her like she was a monster. She gave her a look of pure awe and envy, as if she'd give anything to be just like her. Tifa dispelled Yuffie's thoughts as quickly as she could, but Yuffie still seemed too interested in what she could do. A lingering glance at her hands, widened eyes at the blue. She was enamored, and it troubled Tifa.

Every time they'd do something like this, be it invading a dark corner of the black market or a secluded shop, Yuffie would play with all the items layered across the stand or the counter, twirl a knife across her finger and say, "Nice job, Teef. Real mysterious. Bet that guy won't wake up for a week."

Tifa would teach her tricks of the trade, how to barter, how to fool, how to bat lashes and smile and get what she wanted without lifting a finger.

Men were suckers for young girls. They were too generous. Too foolish. They didn't know a thing about them, and that's what made men the easiest targets in their line of work to exploit and manipulate, culling their pockets with an innocent smile and false naivety.

Others weren't swayed by feminine wiles. They both learned that the hard way, gaining busted lips and swollen eyes. It was a blessing they'd always managed to get away before the men were finished unbuckling their belts.

After several weeks, they found themselves successful, raiding an abandoned apartment and taking over, having enough money to last them for a generous timeline without forcing them to go out to steal and shimmy into a poor lad's pocket. They were cruising on their illegal possessions, things that weren't theirs but things they claimed were. Tifa had thought about getting honest jobs and gaining money the old-fashioned way, but honest jobs were hard to come by looking the way they did. They were half-starved and withdrawn, clothes secondhand and threads loose and dangling. They fixed them up the best they could with what they had, but they were street rats through and through, and there wasn't enough soap in the world to hide that.

It should not have been surprising when Tifa shimmied up to the wrong store at the wrong time, one of those days, flying high on success and the racing thoughts of invincibility that floated along so closely behind.

She was able to snag a small, leather bracelet from the store. It was easy. No cameras, no security tags. Just a small stand full of trinkets and earrings, sparkling and effervescent in the fluorescent lighting. There wasn't much sunlight where they lived. The sky was blocked by too much smog, the world perpetually gray and orange. Things didn't shine on the outside, the only colors available dull grays, blacks, and rust.

Even still, Tifa had seen Yuffie glance at those stands longingly the past few weeks. It was the least Tifa could do.

Tifa couldn't remember the last time she had a true friendship. If Yuffie wasn't her friend, she wouldn't be able to define the word. She slowed her walking, far enough away from the store to feel comfortable, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out the bracelet and examined it, running her thumb over the rhinestones and leather, feeling the contrast between them and appreciating it. She hoped Yuffie would like it, as plain and dismal as it was.

"Tifa Lockhart."

The voice chilled her to the bone, freezing her legs into the cracks of the cement. It was a rough voice, low, and the acknowledgement of her name felt more like a command.

"Put your hands above your head."

She swallowed. Her hands started to shake with a certain type of fear, and her stomach bolted down to her knees. She hadn't seen anyone around, hadn't picked up on the authority's scent. She'd only been caught a few times when she was younger, before she found herself in the palace in Wutai, and she vowed she'd never let it happen again. His boots were loud enough. Why hadn't she heard him?

She started to lift her arms, showcasing her surrender, before taking off. She ran down the rest of the street, as fast as she could go. She took a sharp turn at the corner, the reverberations of the man's boots reaching her toes through her socks. She was almost to the checkpoint, to the chain link fence that might give her the clearance of losing him. Just a few seconds extra to help her vanish from his sight. That's all she needed.

She was reaching out for it when she was jerked against it. She could feel her cheek bruising from the impact, the whole half side of her face pressed up against the metal diamonds. Her breath caught and she had a hard time gaining air. She could barely hear his words as he grasped her hands behind her back, one over the other, the feel of handcuffs closing over them.

Once she noticed them, she pushed and fought with all her might. She tried pulling her hands away, to free her wrists from his hold, but he was too strong. His gloved hands only gripped hers tighter, and there was a heat behind them, a slow fire that she was too well aware of. One she had, too. He must be SOLDIER, she thought. He's not just a grunt patrolman. He must have been looking for her. She slotted the information in her mind, and she tried measuring his distance behind her, positioned herself just right, and kicked her leg back.

He blocked her shot. He pressed a knee into her hamstring, effectively cancelling out all other movement. She growled under her breath in frustration. There was no chance in hell she was going to jail. She covered her tracks meticulously every time she went out. What made her so careless, suddenly?

He reached down and untangled her fists, dislodging the stolen gift with aggressive effort. He silently pocketed it, and Tifa's eyes went blind with rage. She shot her elbow into his ribs, the surprised puff of his breath hitting her shoulder. She quickly turned and punched him in the eye, running back the way she came, turning right into a narrow alley and never looking back.

"Hey!" She heard behind her, the voice still feeling as if it was hitting her shoulder. He was keeping up pace with her, relentlessly, and she felt angry tears forming at the back of her eyes. She never cried. Nobody was allowed to see her tears again, and it wasn't going to be because she was going to jail.

She always prided herself on her speed, but in the end, he exceeded her. She knew that at the beginning, from his strength, holding her against the fence. It was an unfair disadvantage, and she'd always been at a disadvantage. It didn't change anything. Her mind raced. Perhaps she could twist it into her own advantage, using his ignorance of her capabilities. She still had the element of surprise.

He grabbed her arm once he caught up, huffing, cursing. "Last time, Lockhart. You're coming with me whether you like it or not."

She hunched her shoulders. "I don't think so."

He let go of her wrists with one hand, reaching up to grip her neck between his fingers. "Don't make me do this."

His gloves were cut off at the fingers. They were cold but were rapidly heating up, right inside his fingerprints. He was going to knock her out. Send jolts of mako through her, shut her off. Easy. Effective. She'd done it more than once.

She looked at him. "You don't have to. I'll go willingly if you let up."

He hesitated. She immediately took action.

Her wrists broke through the handcuffs, melting the lock just enough. She spun out of his grip, her blue light encompassing the entirety of her arms. She raised her fists in front of her, placing a foot behind her in a fighting stance. She wasn't wearing her brass knuckles today, and that was a foolish mistake on her part. She'd have to make do.

His eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, mouth parted and in shock, but he wasn't disgusted or repulsed by her. How could he be, when he was the same?

"You're…of course you are."

The rough, chilling edge was gone. He sounded like a boy now, and it matched his face better that way. He couldn't be older than twenty.

It was the first real look Tifa got of him. Blonde, erratic hair, blue eyes as blue as her glow. The lines of his face were sharp and defined, but his cheeks looked soft, a hard contrast along everything about him. There was a large sword on his back, glinting menacingly, absorbing all the light there was around them. His SOLDIER uniform even had an edge to it, all black – black vest and black pants and black straps. He had a shoulder guard, another metal. That's all he was made up of, black and metal and mako, just like the black market. The mako was so highly concentrated, his eyes were lasers, beaming like spotlights.

"I'm what?" she whispered harshly. "A monster like you?"

He put a hand up in front of him, placating. "You don't have to do this – "

She punched the air, shooting a fire ball at him. He dodged it.

"Don't you tell me what I can and can't do. Just give me the bracelet and leave me alone."

His eyes hardened. Gone was the boy. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

"What? Give me the bracelet? Or let me go?"

"Both," he said, his lip curling enough to show part of his teeth. His already raised hand went to the hilt, then he swiftly pulled it out, the noise grating against her ears. She tightened her fists.

He set it out in front of him, the tip of it almost reaching her.

"Fine," she said, rushing a kick at the sword and lunging at the opening it left. He blocked her shot with his arm, bringing the sword around. She ducked a second before it came around, a piece of hair falling into her eyes. She rose up with an uppercut, clanking his teeth together on impact, his lip starting to bleed from getting caught in between.

He shoved the hilt into her side, a moment after she busted his lip. She rammed into the bricks of the building that bordered the alley, but the mako helped her gain back her breath quickly.

The good thing about mako was the recharging abilities it gave off. She could break her leg and be healed in three days. Her scars didn't last a month. She chipped a tooth once, but the enamel grew back.

The man's lip, on a quick glimpse, had already stopped bleeding.

She went in to punch his nose, but he whacked her with the side of his sword. She flew off balance and rolled across the alley, pushing herself up and glaring at him while bracing herself for another attack.

Surprisingly, he set his sword to the side. His jaw was set, his eyes still rigid and glowing. "Are you done playing games?"

Her glow started to wane. She hadn't used it for so long in one period since…before Wutai. She again cursed herself. She let herself go soft. She should have kept up her endurance. Feeling the unavoidable pull of exhaustion, all of her energy absorbed and dissipating, it made the fire of defiance in her heart begin to wane. No, she thought. She wasn't going to jail.

She shook her head. "You think I'm going to let you take me in?"

He sighed at her, inaudibly. She could tell from how his chest heaved and lowered and the exasperation in his eyes.

He set his sword onto his back, then shut his eyes for a moment. An ethereal green light started coalescing around him, like a light smoke suddenly starting to lift out in plumes of clouds. When he opened his eyes, they were glowing. It was unmistakable. They were brighter than the whites of his eyes, his pupils perfect, round circles that focused on her in all of their black.

He was frightening.

She dropped her fists down to her torso, stepping back once, then twice. She was ready to bolt, but it looked as though he was anticipating it with the predatory curl of his stance. In one leap, he would have her, and he'd take her in, and it'd be all over. Yuffie would be on her own, by herself in the big, wide world. Tifa knew for a fact that she wasn't ready. Only two months wasn't enough preparation for a girl to be out on the streets. She should haul herself home, to the loving arms of Godo. That's where she belonged.

But she'd never get to her to tell her. They gave themselves three hour windows, and if they weren't back or gave notice before that time was up, they were supposed to suspect the worst to happen to each other. Yuffie would know something bad happened to her. She'd go looking, even though she wasn't supposed to. She'd find nothing. She might do something stupid and really be in trouble, and Tifa wouldn't be there for her, to save her like she always did.

Tifa's eyes strained. Stupid Yuffie. Stupid friendship. Stupid bracelet. The world was a mean thing. It contained awful feelings and even more awful creatures.

The man in front of her wasn't an exception. If he opened his mouth and had fangs, she wouldn't flinch.

She dropped her arms all the way to her legs. She grasped at her shorts and bunched up the fabric.

The blue around her disappeared. It left her drained, tired, and, she'd admit, scared. She never felt scared toward anything. Mako did that. She'd always feel invincible, the magic running in her veins, but now, it was gone, because he matched and exceeded all of her power. He could break her in half, like a twig, and she knew it. He had so much more inside of him than she did. Willpower was not enough.

And stupid, dumb Yuffie, and even Godo, though she – they – betrayed him. They made Tifa feel like she was important. They gave her something to live for. Now, she was scared not only for her life, but Yuffie's, too.

She tightened her hands to lessen the shaking, and she pushed her feet into the concrete, to keep her upright and steady. She decided not to run away this time, not to be a coward in the midst of her fear.

He started to walk towards her, noticing her stance. He must have seen her resolve, because his gait was steady, his boots clomping one after the other. It didn't take him long to reach her, and if he felt pity toward her, he didn't show it.

He stopped a solid foot in front of her, and she absorbed his smoke, felt it whorl around her tongue and throat, electrifying her nerves, hyping up her already drained body. And she wondered, if this was what the vaporized mako did to her, what did the high concentrations do to him? What was he feeling now, underneath the thick haze?

He lifted a hand. "Either you come with me freely, I handcuff you, and we'll be on our way, or…" he gestured toward his uplifted hand. "Or I make sure you come with me, and you'll wake up in a cell. Your choice."

As sticky and sweaty and jittery as she was, she wanted to know what it was like. She wasn't a junkie – she'd never even tried the stuff outside of the accident – but she was intoxicated. All of it dug into her skin like needles, like millions of parasites feeding off her. What did it taste like, what did it do? Did it give him inhuman strength, just like she thought? Could he really snap her spine clean through? Did he have power, all the power in the world? Could she feed off of that power? Could it take her away?

That's what she really wanted. For it to take her away – not to jail, but somewhere that wasn't this alley, or this world, or places that sold guns and murder on a piece of paper. The mako was just an enzyme, speeding up all these wants and thoughts. It made her dizzy, and her stomach felt sick, but the real thing that mako did – the absolute that she saw right then as she stared at him and into him, was that it always made you desperate for impossible things. Dreams and daydreams. A playground of surrealism. She tried to ignore it, because she wasn't going to jail, she would get away from him, she would save Yuffie and create a new life for them in a new city and get…away.

She was no match for it. Her defiance made her weak and shortsighted. Did she really think she'd get away from a SOLDIER?

"Take me away," she whispered, reaching for his hand with her own.

He seemed to realize what she was doing a second too late. She placed her palm against his, and her hair flew back at the rush, the sensation. One touch, and her nerve endings caught on fire like dried grass – all of them burning up into ashes. She wouldn't close her eyes. She didn't think that she could. All her limbs were tensed, her muscles contracting and relaxing, once, twice per second. Her lips twitched, and maybe she was blinking, rapidly, faster than she could tell. Her eyes watered. She thought, maybe she was crying on the outside. Really crying. Maybe she was dying, too. Her heart squeezed painfully, fibrillating and fraying at the edges.

She didn't care. For the first time, she didn't care that someone was watching her disintegrate, change, turn back into a little girl who lost her way.

Then it was over, all her fuses shutting off in her mind and her heart. She fell backward, and the last thing she thought was, I'm sorry, Yuffie. I'm going to jail.