Glimpses of Normalcy

"I look back on where I'm from, look at the woman I've become, and the strangest things seem suddenly routine."

Hansel Schmidt

When we were kids, we'd sit in our secret place in the mountain and tell ghost stories. Mountain spirits, the restless souls of separated lovers, and dead mothers- that sort of thing. Johnny being the prankster he was would lean really close to one of us and wail. We'd all scream, cuss, and then laugh.

Last month, I saw a real ghost in the mountains.

In this world of grey, who played the hero or villain eventually becomes inconsequential on a long enough timeline.

I got my own place here close to that old trail. Life goes on. I try not to hold grudges, and I try to forgive, but this is going to be hard.

He understands.

And just maybe, we'll be okay after all.

Tabloids, magazines, television- the media. No matter where I went, I'd never escape it. The paparazzi and journalists were lurking around every corner, and it was just damning how central gossip had become to our lives in the last few years…in the past, even I caught myself getting sucked into it. With all of this attention on myself and…the incident, it was enough to drive me crazy, but I'd been holding up.

For now.

Cid's reading material struck a chord for the unusual; he preferred some of the more sensationalist tabloids, the sort of kind you'd see about half monster, half human kids, ghosts, and urban legends…that sort of thing. I found them all piled up high in the engineering room next to an old pot of coffee of which I so desperately needed a cup. That or liquor to calm my nerves. The coffee was cold and burnt, maybe brewed yesterday and heated up again this morning, but it'd do, and then a shower…

Cid and Yuffie were the two people I'd seen the most of in the last three years. Barret was busy with rebuilding Corel and working under Reeve on the whole WRO project. So far it was working better than we could have ever hoped. Vincent had vanished without a word, but I suppose I couldn't have expected anything else from him. Maybe he'd been the smart one in this whole post-Meteor hero status that'd been thrown on us all.

For the morning as a whole there wasn't much to say. I called Cid in on a favor, and he agreed to fly me to Nibelheim. If he knew anything about what had happened to me last week, he certainly kept to himself about it.

Cloud called today, and he didn't even sound that upset over the line. I'd been in the bathroom combing through my wet hair after showering when my PHS went off, his number on the screen. I debated whether I should answer for a few seconds, and then put the phone to my ear.

He'd suggested marriage counseling, and I declined. He was asking far too much. He said something snide, and I hung up. In the past, Cloud had been so quiet that I'd often miss his softly murmured sarcasm., I was just content with him speaking to me at all when we first settled down in Costa del Sol. This sudden frankness- I don't know. It was certainly offsetting.

Ever since I'd come off ketamine, I looked and felt like shit. Cat said it was natural and that the aches, the paleness, and the jitters would subside with time. I certainly hoped they would. I finished combing through my hair, working out all of those little tangles and dressed- black leggings, green tank, comfortable walking shoes, and my signature gloves. Simple and functional. I hadn't been to Nibelheim since Shinra rebuilt it, and I wasn't sure how long I could stand being there. Something in me felt like I'd make a beeline straight for the mountains the moment my feet touched the ground. It was hard staying still in the ship. It just wasn't fast enough. I had to get to Nibelheim soon or I'd burst.

Cid's new airship, The Shera, was a work of art- all new glass paneling and automated doors. Everything was smooth and chrome and felt untouchable in contrast to old hominess of the Highwind. It probably felt that way just because I hadn't been on the ship often enough. Cid had been a busy man himself these last few years. He revolutionized Rocket Town into the main hub for aeronautical engineers and scientists; it wouldn't be long until we were all calling it Rocket City; its population had nearly tripled in size since the end of Shinra. No one on the planet wasted any time at all picking up and rebuilding.

I began to wander the expanses of the Shera and stopped in one corridor. Through the window, construction was the lay of the land. The mantra of the planet had become "build, build, build!" these last few years. I'd heard things about Nibelheim too. About a year and a half ago, it'd grown large enough to start shipping out a newspaper across the planet; Cloud and I would read it irregularly. What had been a destination for mercenaries and men who'd wanted to disappear off the radar directly after Meteor fell became quite the resort town. The planet's wealthy flocked there, building up their manors and expensive hotels replacing the town's single quaint inn. Did anything at all remain of my childhood there? I bit back bile.

My stomach lurched as the great ship began its slow descent. We ghosted the wispy clouds hovering just above the mountain tops. I traced old haunts as we neared Nibelheim or rather what was left of them. The resort had already pushed this far into view; we couldn't have been more than ten miles away from the village now. Ski lifts, ramps, and rails tore across the landscape, and dynamite blew hundred year old paths out of existence. It was the death of an age. The unconquerable mountains were at last tamed. I turned away from the scene and made my way towards the main deck where Cid would be piloting.

"Almost there," Cid called from behind the wheel. He saw me enter the room, and I went to stand near his side, "Isn't the new ship a beauty?"

"Yeah. It's so different than the Highwind…not that the old ship wasn't nice too," I answered lamely. Airships were definitely not my forte.

"Would ya believe I found all of these parts scattered around the Forgotten Capital. Reconstructed them all into this, but it's still not finished yet. Finished enough to fly though," Cid had always been so good-natured. It was hard to be glum around him, and I was so thankful that he hadn't said anything about what happened last week. I knew it was still all over the news, "Shera's been wanting you to come around to Rocket for ages."

"I know. I'm planning on it, right after I take care of some things in Nibelheim."

"What's taking you there anyway, kid?"

Cid was nothing if not curious; it was easy to forget that underneath the simple pilot exterior was an engineering genius who dabbled in just about everything. He and Cat were similar like that in many regards. I tilted my head to the side, my hair falling in my face; I brushed it away and answered him "I never wanted to go at first. I'd talk about it, but it's just one of those things that I have to do, you know?"

He grunted in reply. I could tell that he wanted to say something but thought better of it and instead pointed towards the patch of green still so far beneath the airship, "I'll set her down just on the plains outside of the village."

An attendant on the ship had packed my things for me and dropped my pack at my side, and after landing, Cid pulled me into a bear hug, "Take care of yourself, Tifa."

"You too, Cid," I flashed him one of my best smiles. He was worried, and it was my fault. I wanted to apologize but didn't. I wanted to say so many things to Cid and Shera too whenever I saw her again. In all reality, they weren't that much older than the rest of us in Avalanche, but in the last few years, they'd been something like surrogate parents to me. Shera had always been there when I couldn't deal with Cloud and his moods in the past, and in the last year, I'd basically cut myself off from her. I really regret that.

As I left the Shera, slinging my pack over my shoulder, Cid waved from the deck until I couldn't see him any longer. The Nibel Plains had been unusually quiet on the way to the village. Well, village was an understatement. I couldn't even call Nibelheim a town now…it was a fully fledged city and construction was showing no signs of halting anytime soon. Since when had the roads been paved? It was a soul-sucking sort of feeling. I wasn't sure what was worse…the lie that Shinra had built over Nibelheim's blackened ashes or this living beast of winding streets and avenues and wandering tourists underneath the setting sun.

"Hey lady," someone shouted from an alleyway. I looked over; they must've been talking to me. It was a little boy standing near a street stall, "You wanna buy a map. You look lost."

The irony. The only real daughter of Nibelheim in this whole damn place, and I was the one lost.

"Yeah, I'll take one," I dug in my pockets for the change and shoved it over for the little fold-out map. I'd reserved a room already by phone but I didn't quite feel like checking in. It wasn't night yet, and maybe there was time left to trek in the mountains. I traced my feet to a path leading to a place which they called Old Town. Old Town led to the heart of the city…town…or whatever Nibelheim had become these days. The waves of tourists in ski gear had tapered off significantly as I neared a familiar locale: that all too memorable ring of houses, the inn, general store, water tower, and the Shinra Mansion or so I'd wished. There came that feeling again- my heart and soul being evacuated through my every orifice.

Everything changed. Old dirt lanes had become those fancy cobbled paths that I'd always wanted in my childhood. The general store which Shinra had reconstructed so carefully, beam by beam and brick by brick was replaced by a new convenience store, and the Shinra Mansion was marked for destruction to be replaced by…I peered closer at the sign nailed to the rusted fence- to be replaced by a luxury spa.

Most of the houses had been bulldozed under once the charade was no longer necessary to maintain and were replaced with larger, more modern homes. And the water tower? Gone. I walked closer to the center of the square and remembered just how the water would slosh out of the occasional hole and how my father or some other man in the village would be up there hammering away all day, patching it up. I wanted those days back, but what stood there now took my breath away. From the distance, the delicately worked stone had been hard to make out. Me? They'd carved me out of stone and Cloud too…facing in opposite directions with me pointing forwards towards the mountains and him pointing out of Old Town towards the plains and the sea with his sword. Our faces were grim and noble like an old tragic painting, and there was something engraved into the stone beneath our feet: To the heroes who'd sacrificed again and again for the sake of a world in which we could all live and breathe freely. To our heroes of Nibelheim- Tifa and Cloud. May we never forget their sacrifices.

A twister could've passed through Nibelheim right now, and I wouldn't have budged a single inch. A lump welled up in my throat and I wiped my already stinging eyes. Everything about Nibelheim had become so artificial; the village as I knew it died eight years ago, but this, this was genuine. It was so hard to cope with the lost when I lived in Midgar, knowing that no one else would ever know this place's story. It went beyond my personal tragedy and Cloud's. Sephiroth massacred an entire town, and Shinra imprisoned its memory for so long. I leant against the cold stone and openly wept. Cat told me to stop running, and this was me, standing still and mourning the loss which had never healed and most likely never would, but I finally stopped running from my own hurts. I must've been there for twenty minutes or so, feeling drained and looking worse than ever before. As I hugged the stone, through the crook of the stone Cloud's arm, I saw my house, unchanged on the exterior except for what appeared to be a second addition onto the frame of the house in the back. So many feelings swept through my body as I walked over to my old house or rather the one Shinra had built in its place.

I saw myself running through the door over to Johnny's to meet the others. We'd laugh, play, and go up to the mountains nearly every day. Why had I ever wanted to leave all of this? I was such a stupid kid back then. I wanted to go right up to my front door to fling myself on a bed that was no longer mine because in the end of it all- that wasn't my house. Whatever was left of the home where I'd grown up now fertilized the lawn.

When I first came here three years ago with Avalanche on the chase for Sephiroth, Shinra staffed the house with a father and his daughter. He was acting mayor then, and gave some crummy, stuttering explanation about having lived here all of his life with his daughter. One look from me silenced him, but that seemed like such a long time ago. I wondered if the same people were living there…in that house. It was too late to knock, and I was sure they hadn't forgotten me; after the damage, I was sure they wouldn't for a very, very long time.

Forgive me, but sometimes even I think I'm allowed to fly off of the handle.

Shamelessly, I traipsed through the wildflowers that'd grown up underneath the window and peered in. I felt like a nighttime prowler, creepy and unwanted. I stood on the tips of my toes, looking through the cracks between the curtains. Someone altered the décor significantly and thrown out much of the furniture with which Shinra had restocked the house in a poor effort to emulate mine. I gasped…out of the corner of my eye and then into full view, Vincent entered the living room.

My life is stranger than going to the movies nowadays, and I just roll along with the punches. After everything I've seen in life, if a UFO came down from the sky and abducted me at this very moment, I wouldn't feel too shocked. My breath fogged the window, and I leant closer bumping the glass with the bridge of my nose and accidentally tapped it.

Smooth.

Keen as ever the old gunslinger suddenly looked up towards the window; I ducked. The last thing I wanted was to get a bullet through my skull or to be caught looking…well like this. I wasn't sure which of the two was worse. I leapt to my feet just outside of the window's range of sight and dusted myself off.

Vincent opened the door and glanced out. My blood ran cold, and I blushed madly.

"Tifa," he deadpanned. If he were surprised to see me at all, I'd never know. He motioned towards me, "Come in."

I followed him and looked around. Vincent had repainted all of the walls a stark white. There were no pictures hanging up, just simple wooden furniture and one large couch.

"I suppose I owe you an apology," he began and pointed towards big brown couch to sit.

I sat and waved my hand, "What for? I was the one looking through your window. I should be the one apologizing here," those words coming out of my mouth, if only I could've disappeared right then and there.

He didn't say anything and then looked thoughtful for a moment before offering, "Tea?"

I nodded and followed him into the kitchen. Leaning against the wall, I watched him work, boiling water and sifting through the cupboards for tea and sugar.

Never looking up, he asked in that muted way that was uniquely Vincent, "What brings you back here?"

"Unfinished business," I answered without thinking, "I can't keep avoiding this place forever."

He paused for moment and looked at me, "Ah. So what are your plans?"

This was the most talkative Vincent had ever been in the past, and I folded my arms to think, "I hadn't thought about it. I only just really arrived. I've been walking around a bit, looking at the place. It's hardly the same. How do you live here with all of the tourists?"

He shrugged, "I work in the mountains as an exterminator at night. I never see them. It was a deal worked out with the new mayor. There are others, but I work alone."

"I've been thinking about going to mountains myself."

He put the kettle on the boil and turned around to really look at me. His eyes narrowed, "Planning on skiing?"

It was like a cool breeze blew into the room. I wasn't sure what I'd said to put him on edge, but he was hanging onto my every word, "No," I bobbed up and down on my feet, "I was planning on taking the old path up to the reactor."

"You wouldn't want to go up there."

"Why?"

Vincent walked across the room and opened another cupboard to grab two cups, two saucers, and a tray, "It isn't safe. Even the resort workers didn't develop over there. I work that area of mountain. With the reactor no longer functioning, mako's been bubbling up and mutating a few of the monsters along the way every now and then."

I shrugged, "It was like that before they built the reactor anyway…mako's always been close to the surface around there. I can handle myself. I have enough mastered materia on me to take on just about anything. When do you leave for mountain? Maybe…"

"No," he shook his head suddenly, "I apologize, but I prefer to go alone."

As he carried the tea back to the living room, I followed and sat across from him quietly, thinking. This level of standoffishness was atypical even for Vincent, but then again I really hadn't seen him since Avalanche disbanded.

"Is anything wrong?" I murmured, blowing over the hot cup. The aromatic herbs were enticing, pulling in and digging at my senses. I could sit there for hours and inhale that deep citrusy aroma.

"No," Vincent turned away. He'd seemingly returned to his quiet self. I decided to drop it. Could he have seen me on the news…I wasn't sure if that story would've played here in Nibelheim, but it was pretty likely. The village had grown large enough. I wondered if I made him uncomfortable. A thousand questions flooded my mind as I sat there with Vincent. Suddenly, I was curious about what brought him to Nibelheim. At our yearly reunions, he was never there, and it'd been nearly impossible to get a hold of the man. If it weren't for Yuffie and her insistence on endearing herself to him, he could've died and we wouldn't have known. Why hadn't Yuffie told me he had been living in Nibelheim…in my old house?

"Vincent," I looked up from the dark, swirling liquid steaming in my cup and tried to catch his eyes, "Why are you here in Nibelheim?"

He gave me the faintest of wry smiles, "I intended to return to my coffin to sleep, but Shinra Mansion is beyond dilapidated. It was easier just to buy this house, and they needed someone willing to go up in the mountains and keep the village safe."

I drank down the rest of my tea in silence, and Vincent led me back towards the new parts of town, to my hotel, and informed me that he'd soon be going out on his shift.

He leaned against a wooden pillar beneath lodge's balcony and said his goodbyes, "If you need to find me, you know where I'll be." The house, that house…my house.

I watched his form sweep off into the darkness back to Old Town and towards the trail. I could take care of myself, and it wouldn't be following him if I were to ghost along the trail leading up to the reactor. I hadn't liked venturing out in the dark, but I had to see that reactor tonight. Then, I could call Cat, talk about it, and hopefully sleep without dreaming of back then.

Checking in was more arduous than I would've liked. The man behind the counter recognized me and told me something about my staying here being such an honor and so on and so forth. I was able to get away after five minutes with only signing an autograph. I quickly found my room. It was clean and simple; the window was a single long pane which gave a terrific view of the ski slopes. Little forms weaved down the mountain- skiers still out this late. I changed clothes for something more appropriate to late autumn in Nibelheim. The cold could be treacherous at night on the mountains if you weren't careful, and I wasn't bargaining for hypothermia so early in my trip. I started to call Cat but instead checked all of the messages that'd collected on my PHS- Johnny, Yuffie, Cloud, and a few others from Costa del Sol.

I wanted to avoid life for awhile longer. The nagging pull of finalizing my divorce could wait, and then there was work. Running the Seventh Heaven in Midgar was a necessity, but reopening it in Costa del Sol was a mistake. I was sick of having a job I hated, but I also needed a roof over my head and food to eat. Cloud would probably end up selling the house anyway. I could always go to the WRO, and Reeve would've been glad to have me on his team. Well, maybe not so much…because what happened last week would be a public relations nightmare if he hired me right now. Reeve was above that though. I mean if he worked aside women like Scarlet, then he would've been glad to have me. No, I'm not trying to convince myself of that. Well…maybe I am.

I worry too much sometimes.

I shook my head and brought myself back to the task at hand. The reactor. It was now or never. If I lay in bed and thought about it all night, rolling and turning, I would never be able to get up and go there tomorrow. I found myself back in Old Town again in no time at all, staring up at the familiar path. I had stood in that very spot eight years ago, so full of dreams. I remember barely being able to stand still between Zack and Sephiroth for the photograph. We had to do the shot over twice; I kept fidgeting and throwing looks at Sephiroth. It was hard to walk by that spot, but somehow I managed.

The mountain air was mako rich as the acrid odor hit my nostrils in the breeze. Imagine smelling the most powerful chemical fertilizer in existence mixed with every plant you can think of, that's what mako smells like. Wind whipped up my hair, and I glanced wide and around. Grass and shrubs littered what'd once been only windblown dust and barren soil. Give it another decade or so and there'd be trees. Did shutting down the reactor for three years bring all of this life back to the mountains? It was like then, when I was a still kid barely out of diapers. Flowers sprawled out almost as far as the eye could see. It wasn't there yet, but it was getting there. I couldn't help but smile.

Everyone I'd ever known in this town died, but life was coming back. I was starting to feel at peace and wistfully nostalgic until this downright eerie chill ran along my spine. I cleared my mind and allowed my senses to take over. Something had been tailing me. I glanced around as I journeyed along the pass, but whatever it was left as soon as I reached the clearing and the bridge. It'd been rebuilt and looked stronger than ever, but the way it swayed in the wind had my heart racing. One step at a time, my feet padded softly over the wood swiftly and carefully. I couldn't help but recall how it snapped and how I tumbled so far below.

Heh, silly thought, Tifa. Don't think about things like that.

After making it to the other side, I stopped for a moment to let out the breath that I hadn't known I was holding. I slumped down against a wall of sheer rock and peered up into the heavens. Nibelheim used to be really dark at night, real country dark, and you could see a countless number of stars. The infrastructural overload had seen to that; I could see maybe five major constellations at the most. A big half-moon sat in the sky, waxy and yellow. I wanted to sit there and reminisce, but I'd come here for a reason. Trepidation ate a hole in my stomach, and I became increasingly aware that I'd scarcely eaten all day bar tea with Vincent and coffee on the Shera. I definitely didn't feel like eating now.

The quick route to the reactor was only a ten minute walk. It was odd that nothing attacked me yet. Vincent must've been good at his job. I kept my fist around my mastered fire materia just in case. You could never be too prepared. With each step, the smell of mako grew stronger until it was nearly singeing my nostrils. The grass grew thicker, healthier- fertilized by the planet's lifeblood, and up came a shaft of light through the thin past. I broke into the clearing, and there stood the reactor overtaken by vines. I didn't know what I was expecting. To see a ruin maybe, but that would be silly. It'd only been three years after all since it went into disuse. The emergency lighting was still even working, though it was significantly dimmer than it'd probably been when the reactor was first shut down.

My hands were shaking as I walked up the rail into the reactor; the door wasn't barred or locked, but why would it be? No one had entered this building since its deactivation. So many thoughts, so many memories, and none of them were good. I remembered when the trees had died, and we had to start importing our crops because they failed on the plains just outside of Nibelheim. All this for the convenience that easy electricity brought? Ha.

The mako had risen significantly underneath the bridge which connected the two platforms in the entranceway in the reactor, and the smell was so strong that I could practically taste it. This room, I hated it. The familiar valves, rusted metal, the wide chamber with its pipes that'd once siphoned off the lifestream- everything was wrong about this room. I wanted to race across the room and destroy everything in sight; I'd never wanted to see this place again but here I stood. I paced across the bridge and turned to face the area on the floor where my father had lain and died- butchered for just asking why Sephiroth set the village ablaze. I often asked that myself too. The betrayal had stung so deeply and it still did even after all that I'd learned about him. Jenova. Lucrecia. Hojo. What did these names even mean? What did any of this mean? The senseless violence, the absolute destruction, our ruined lives. Jenova could go to Hell. I'd never have my life back.

So often, I wanted to wake believing that everything had been one long dream. The blood stain on the smooth metal floor had been scrubbed clean a long, long time ago. This was last place I'd ever seen my father. I let it wash over me like an ocean wave on the beach at Costa del Sol. Where was that reluctant acceptance and peace that coming here promised? I only felt numb.

"I'm sorry," I didn't even know I'd spoken aloud until I heard myself, but I didn't stop there, "Maybe it's better this way that you couldn't see what I've become…who I am today." It wasn't better, and whispering that was a waste of breath. Still, there was no comfort or release; I wanted to call Cat and tell her how much of a bad idea this was. I just wanted to be put somewhere and looked after where I could take medication powerful enough to never be aware of anything again.

I peered over the edge of the rail peering into the depths of the lifestream below. My reputation was ruined; it wouldn't hurt. Dissolving was freedom. Heh, what a silly fleeting thought. I wouldn't give the media the satisfaction of making their allegations truth. Something thudded in the distance, a metallic noise in the other chamber which pulled me away from my dark thoughts. That sinking feeling in my gut returned- the feeling of being watched. Nothing followed me into the reactor; I stared wide and around. Everything was coming from that chamber- the noise grew louder. Feet against metal…scraping boots? No, I wouldn't be stupid enough to call out; I pulled the fire materia from my pocket once more.

The old conversion pods were dark, and I glanced around. It was dimmer in here, but I could make out a rough cot near the side of the room and strode over to it. Someone was living here?

"Wait, Tifa!" Vincent shouted as he burst into the reactor.

"Vincent?" I turned. He'd only just gotten here, but we weren't alone.

"Just turn around and go back to Nibelheim."

"What's going on here," I demanded. There was more beyond the cot: pots and pans, some old food containers, and newspapers. I looked around at the place. It had all of the fixings of a camp. I folded my arms, "Vincent?"

He sighed, staring past me, and I followed his gaze to the top of the stair. There Sephiroth stood, and I thought I'd outgrown ghost stories.