Chapter One
"Hey! Tifa! Come quick!"
Tifa Lockhart raised an eyebrow at the harried voice of Emilio, who stood at the edge of the meadows, just beyond the roads that led back towards Northern Wutai. He was waving both hands in the air, dark, curly locks spilling into his eyes and shining under the bright mid-morning sun.
"Hm?"
Tifa squinted into the sunlight, dragging her fingers from where they dawdled in the gently passing waters of the stream she was bent over. It led to the River Xy, the largest river in Wutai that circled the nation's borders on the inner peninsula.
Rising to her feet, Tifa absently dried her fingertips on the hip of her kimono. Stargazer lilies grew in bright, colorful floating patches on riverbanks here, and she had been collecting them that morning for a special gift she was working on. Thinking of it again, her cheeks warmed, and she picked up her basket of flowers, pushing the innocent thoughts away as she turned and made her way through thick blades of grass to the pathways leading back to town.
"What is it?" she asked.
Emilio blinked, and he turned, pointing back towards the pagodas. Emilio was tall for his age and thickly built, and Tifa liked to imagine it was from all of the meats he consumed, his father the owner of the largest slaughterhouse and kobini in their province. Brushing off her kimono from dirt and grass, she approached him by the side of the road and tilted her head at him.
"Your obaasan told me to fetch you," he explained. "There are visitors from Midgar. The king."
Tifa's eyes widened in slight surprise, and she bowed slightly before following along with Emilio on her way back toward the palace pagoda. Usually, when such dignitaries from other city-states or nations were expected, her parents would warn her ahead of time so that she could be ready. As the only child of the emperor of the Northern Wutai province, Tifa had become well acquainted with the expectations and duties of a royal daughter, even at the tender age of eight. She wondered why the Midgarian king would suddenly make a visit so far across the waters and at such short notice. Midgar was a large nation adjacent to Wutai on the other side of the sea, a place Tifa heard and read much about but had never seen. Where Wutai was a traditionalist and pragmatic nation, Midgar was modern and technologically aggressive, full of mako and airships and mecha. Everything she knew about it she had learned from books or stories others told, and deep inside, she felt a small sense of wonderment about its royal family and any other dignitaries that may have ventured to her homeland that day.
Emilio was mostly quiet as they walked through the gardens and cobblestoned roads, passing through the streets of the upper keep that led to the palace. Tifa found it odd, since he usually was a talkative child. But as they walked together back to the palace, Tifa could observe that a certain quiet had fallen over much of the upper village. Many villagers had retreated into their homes, leaving the streets barren as they observed the roads from their windows or front porches. Even as a young princess, it was still curious to Tifa that the arrival of nobles from another nation would cause so much disruption.
Nonetheless, she walked quickly to the palace, entering the gate near the kitchens where she often did when she left the grounds to play. Emilio broke off from her at that point with a wave, heading down the road towards a spiral of mansions in the nearby foothills where he and his family lived.
"There you are, child!"
Tifa looked up to find her obaasan, Marle, standing at the doorway to the kitchen, waving one hand frantically as a means to usher Tifa along. Putting some pep in her step, Tifa picked up the hem of her kimono and ran in Marle's direction.
"Sorry," she apologized at once, already fearing how Marle might scold her. "I was down by the streams. I didn't know we would have guests today."
Marle clicked her tongue through her teeth, shaking her head dismissively. "Their arrival was quite unexpected," she said. "But never mind that. We must get to the Hall. Your parents are already there awaiting the Shinra's arrival."
Tifa thought to respond, but Marle was quick to grab her shoulders, brushing them off and pulling at the bows of her kimono as she pushed her along. Instead, she kept silent, folding her hands in front of her and hurrying obediently along as the soles of her geta clicked along the polished marble floors.
The Sapphire Hall served as the throne room as well as the largest gathering hall of the castle, a long and wide room that was situated in the center of the building adjacent to an outdoor courtyard and surrounded by pagoda towers that overlooked the entire Northern Province in every direction. It had been named so for the deep blue chalcanthite stone that had been used to build and fortify the interior walls, a mineral that was brilliant in color and absorbed and radiated the rays of sunlight or starlight that would shine in through the open pagoda window frames above, whether it be day or night. Her parents' thrones were situated on a carpeted dais at the anterior front of the room, while seemingly endless rows of onyx and polished wood tables and chairs lined the room, seating for the nobles of the provinces that would gather to hear decrees or public disputes before the royals, or to gather for occasions of communal dining.
At Tifa's fragile age, the Sapphire Hall still seemed overwhelming and imposing, its walls stretching up to greet ceilings that seemed miles and miles away overhead. Every time she entered the room she could feel the heavy weight of the decisions that were made here or of the voices of the ancestors who whispered in their hushed voices reminders of her duty as the Princess of the North. She had felt the subtle power in this room ever since she could first recall her memories and from the time she could first walk, and the heaviness it bore never failed to move her to her bones when she passed through the gilded front entryway.
She entered at a close pace with Marle, eager to avoid drawing attention to herself. Already, the Hall was full. Nobles and distant relatives she recognized from all throughout the richest clans of the North had already gathered, seated at their designated tables with their flags and colors and insignias declaring their names and houses. Voices murmured in hushed tones as they waited, and looking to the front of the room, Tifa noted that her parents had not yet arrived. This gave her a slight pause, her feet slowing their pace as her anxiety built. But Marle pressed her hand into the center of her spine.
"It's quite alright, child," she encouraged her. "They'll be here any moment. Go on, take your seat."
Easier said than done, Tifa thought, every eye inside the hall seemingly on her. But she nodded her head and pressed forward, walking with her head high and her eyes straight ahead along the carpeted pathway that led to the royal seating up front by her parents' throne. There, she turned and bowed respectfully to those gathered, waiting by her seat until her parents entered.
Mercifully, it was only a moment later when the doors to the rear antechamber clambered, and Tifa turned to see her mother appear, every noble in the room rising to their feet as she entered. Thea Lockhart, the empress of Wutai and bloodborne heir of the land, was rumored to be the most beautiful woman the North had seen in generations. With rivers of midnight black hair tied partially on top of her head with a small crown of ruby jewels that matched her eyes, the contrast it set with her pale skin was so striking it was often as if a lightning bolt had erupted whenever she entered a room. Tifa had to admit that like most people, she was in perfect awe of her mother and wished to one day be even a fraction as beautiful as she was.
But more than her beauty, Thea was known for her kindness and her benevolence. As the heir to the throne who had married the Duke of the Nibel Duchy on the Western Continent into the Wutain bloodline, she had brokered peace between nations that had seen many years of tension due to vastly differing cultural and economic priorities. It was her affectionate and dutiful relationship with Tifa's father, Brian Lockhart, that had facilitated such prosperity between two very juxtaposed nations.
It seemed that now, her parents were both working to achieve a similar end with Midgar and its ruling family.
Behind Thea was Claudia Strife, her lady-in-waiting and a low-ranked woman who had come from the Nibel Duchy along with other serving families as part of the marriage between Thea and Brian. Claudia lived in the palace keep and attended to Thea as a personal assistant, whom Tifa knew to also be her close personal friend despite the gap in their class and status. Tifa had known Claudia all her life and looked up to her almost like another Obasaan. And Claudia, although unmarried and living alone, had a son that was Tifa's age, a young boy named Cloud.
Tifa smiled at the thought. Although she and Cloud were worlds apart as a princess and a page, they had come to be very close friends as children due to the closeness of their mothers. In fact, the Stargazer flowers Tifa had been trying to collect on the banks of the Xy that afternoon had been gifts for Cloud.
"Hello, sweetheart," Thea greeted her, interrupting her thoughts as she bent down to press a kiss to Tifa's temple. Tifa smiled, watching her mother gather the silk fabrics of her kimono as she settled into her seat on the throne. Claudia - a young, petite woman with a pretty smile and soft gold hair - smiled in her direction too before she stepped off to the side and made herself scarce.
Tifa was pondering the whereabouts of her friend Cloud when the doors to the front of the Hall were shoved open, the dark maroon robes of the emperor flashing briefly under the blue refractive pillars of the hall. Her father, Brian, entered, a small entourage of samurai flanked behind him in a protective detail. They split off to either side of the walkway as Brian entered, lining the marble floor and keeping a barrier between the royals and the soon-to-be-approaching foreigners.
Tifa watched her father approach, his face set into a stern and unreadable mask as he walked up to his throne. His western features - ruddy mountain skin, hair tinged with auburn, and thick wiry facial hair - were a sharp contrast to the sharp aesthetics of most Wutain men. Despite the way that he stood out, there had been something about Brian Lockhart's compassionate and mutually beneficial manner of leadership that had made him respected in a land and culture that was vastly different from his own.
Tifa smiled when he approached, her heart warmed when he bent down to give her a kiss. Brian had a toughness about him that had helped fortify Northern Wutai and its allies after his marriage to Thea, but beneath that layer was a kind heart that only wanted the best for his family and people. And above all, he loved his daughter, Tifa, more than anything. Everyone in the empire knew it.
"Papa," Tifa greeted him.
His smile was warm in return, patting her shoulder before he moved on to take a seat. His arrival had ushered in a wave of silence in the Sapphire Hall, all eyes and attention turned to him as he settled in the throne.
"See to it that our guests are invited in," he bellowed.
A pair of samurai at the front door nodded, turning away to leave through the front door. Tifa could feel her heart race, the many dozens upon dozens of eyes in the hall all facing forward and watching her and her parents dutifully as they waited for this meeting to occur. As an only child, Tifa felt the stark loneliness of sitting singularly on this dais by her parents, and she did her best to keep from fidgeting her hands in her lap or jostling her knees anxiously back and forth.
As they waited, she caught a flicker of gold to her right. Turning slightly, Tifa spotted Cloud, Claudia's daughter and her best friend, standing in the shadows against the back wall near the antechamber. He had stepped briefly into a spill of sunlight, and the glimmer that it cast on his blond hair had caught her attention. Their eyes locked together for just a moment, and Tifa's cheeks warmed when she realized that Cloud had offered her a small smile.
The sound of the doors opening again caught her attention, and Tifa turned to see another retinue of royal guard enter. Tifa leaned forward as inconspicuously as she possibly could, ambling to get a better look. Up ahead, she could make out the dark purple mantle of the Midgarian King Shinra as he approached. He was a handsome but stocky man, blond-haired with an austere look about him. Behind him was a large battalion of Shinra SOLDIERs, the royal guard to the Midgar royal throne. They splintered off to create a protective barrier on either side of him and the other royals who were in attendance with him as he approached, and Tifa watched with curiosity as a small group of the king's nobles found seats at a table in the very front.
With him and his royal court were two boys, each several years older than she. She knew them to be Lazard and Rufus Shinra, King Shinra's sons and heirs to the Midgarian throne. She noticed that they were along with a group of servants, no queen and no mother attending to them.
"Your Imperial Highnesses," a court attendance addressed her mother and father with a bow, "King Shinra of Midgar."
Her parents rose, offering a bow in a respectful greeting. King Shinra stared for a moment, then followed suit, his face remaining stiff, every line pulled tight. Tifa couldn't help but watch with a lump forming in her throat, an ominous presence filling her with a strange sense of dread as the tension grew in the room.
"Greetings from the great Kingdom of Midgar," Shinra finally spoke, the thundering below of his voice echoing off of the walls of the Sapphire Hall, lacking both the rich Wutain accent of her people yet distinctly different from the mountain dialect that was carried in her father's tongue. He took a look around, then glanced back to her father. "I had hoped we might have somewhere private to discuss business. The matters in which I bring with me are quite confidential."
Thea folded her hands in front of her, while Brian continued to stare, his dark eyes narrowing. There were hushed whispers throughout the hall, the gossip of the noble houses already beginning to stir. Brian cleared his throat, silencing it all, before he leveled his stare back at Shinra.
"Greetings, and welcome to the Northern Province of Wutai, Land of the Golden Moon and the White Stargazer," her father replied. He waited for a moment, his eyes level with the king's. "We… can make that arrangement."
Thea turned to him sharply, dropping her hands in front of her as if prepared to protest. But Brian calmly held his hand up, then gestured to one of the samurai, who moved to open a passageway to a back room. Brian led the way, while a pair of his guards as well as two accompanying Shinra followed the two rulers until they disappeared inside.
A thick silence fell over the hall, stifling the room. Thea glanced over at Tifa, offering her a reassuring look before she turned straight ahead and began to call upon the other nobles who'd accompanied King Shinra for general queries as a way to entertain them.
Tifa swallowed the lump in her throat, settling against her seat as chatter filled the air. The sudden distraction eased her nerves, but she could not help the way her mind spun, wondering what this visit from Midgar would truly mean for her family and for her country.
As her thoughts tangled there, Tifa turned to find one of the Shinra princes staring right at her. They were both blond-haired like their father, tall, slender young meant who appeared to be in their teens. The younger one - Rufus, she knew - had a spill of platinum hair that reached icy blue eyes, trained dangerously on her. As soon as their stares met, he smirked at her, leaning back in his chair. The older brother, Lazard, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose but looked otherwise disinterested.
Tifa felt an uncomfortable chill race up her spine when their eyes met. His smirk, boyish but somehow cold for a youth of his age, deepened. Discomfort flooding her bones, she turned away, searching the crowd for any sign of Cloud and his mop of messy blond hair. It seemed that he had already slipped away into hiding, and she sighed quietly, leaning in the direction of her mother, focusing her attention on her hands and waiting for the meetings to end.
Little did she know how that visit from Midgar would come to change her life.
Wutai's rainy season was at its height when the news came from the Southern Province that would shake everything Cloud had known to its very foundation.
He had spent the morning tending to the chocobo stables behind the palace keep, a chore that kept him busy most mornings. Cloud enjoyed helping out the animals, brushing their feathers and taking them out to ride across the pastures and fields beyond the keep that led towards the rocky shorelines of the Northern Sea. Taking care of the birds allowed him to spend time alone with his own thoughts, away from the other children who lived and worked in the palace or on nearby properties. Unlike Cloud, most of them were born here in Wutai as part of servant families to the royal bloodline, and he was often shunned or ignored by them.
It didn't bother him - at least, he did his best to pretend that it didn't. Cloud had come to Wutai from the Duchy of Nibel when he was only a year old, before he could even remember the misty mountain village where he had been born. His mother, part of the servant household of the Lockharts of Nibel, had traveled there when Brian Lockhart married the princess Thea of the Northern Wutain Province, naming him the emperor of the small Eastern nation. Without a father in his own life, he had grown up only with his mother at his side in a foreign nation, but as the years of his youth had cascaded on, despite his lack of connection with other children or his status as a bastard child in a nation that prided traditions, Cloud came to understand what it meant to live and breathe as a Wutain.
Still, it would have been far lonelier were it not for Tifa Lockhart, the princess and the only heir to Emperor Brian and Empress Thea. Which was who Cloud was heading to see now as he stabled the last of the chocobos that evening, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head to shield it from the rain as he made his way up the hill back to the keep.
Despite growing up in Wutai as if he were one of its own, it was still difficult to adapt. Because his mother was poorer than most of the empresses' ladies in waiting, they were both somewhat ostracized among the servant class. Although Brian was now the emperor of the Northern Province through marriage, the arrangement had been one of political and economic necessity, guaranteeing the open passageway of land and water routes between the East and West. But his leadership and rank were purely due to his sex, as Thea and her holding in Wutai far outgassed the less wealthy stature of the Nibel Dutch. Because of that, those who came with him to the North were of less means than even the typical Wutain servant.
Nonetheless, Thea had taken an affinity to Claudia Strife, even in spite of her out-of-wedlock status with a bastard child carried in her arms in a small bundle when they'd first arrived. The two quickly became friends, and to Brian's great surprise, she appointed Claudia as her chief lady-in-waiting. And so it was only natural that Cloud and Tifa came to grow up side by side as a result of their mothers' closeness, the distance between their quarters no more than a few flights of stairs separating them. They played together every day as young children, only Tifa's studies with her governess and Cloud's work as a page and stablehand as they grew older beginning to take up time that was normally reserved for play.
Now, Cloud considered Tifa, who was a year his junior, his best and only friend. And he kept locked somewhere deep in the quietest valleys of his heart other feelings he had begun to hold for her - feelings that he could not quite understand, that seemed to stir more than the simple, carefree friendship they'd built as tots. He didn't understand it, but the feelings were warm and tender and nice , and so he kept them someplace safe where no one else could find out about them.
Now that Cloud was almost ten, the palace staff kept him busy with work nearly all day long. Dusk was fast approaching and with the volatile weather, the chocobos were to be kept penned inside. It gave him the chance to quit his chores a little earlier than usual, and eagerly, he sought out Tifa.
Tifa usually finished her studies not long after the lunch hour, and so he knew that she would be free by now. His only nagging worry was the competition of her other friends - the wealthy sons of the nobles who were superior to him in stature but certainly not in character. There was a particular trio of them that began to find ways to hang around Tifa more and more as they grew older, especially after Tifa had begun her schooling, and Cloud admitted that it bothered him to no end. But for whatever reason, despite the heat of anger he felt whenever he saw her time being occupied by them, he couldn't find it in himself to try to insert himself in their circle of friendship, especially not as a poor servant bastard. That was what he knew they called him, at least.
But he certainly couldn't find it in himself to blame Tifa for any of this. Despite the rifts with the other wealthy children, Tifa always found time for Cloud.
So he was glad to find her alone in the parlor when he made his way to the upper floors of the pagoda, seated among a cluster of pillows with her feet tucked under her, cross-legged. Her hair was pinned away from her face, leaving the sweep of her dark bangs to fall across her eyes. She was reading from a book, the rain beating against the window above her.
Cloud had been mindful to remember to remove his cloak and his shoes before coming up to the living quarters. More than once he had been scolded for tracking dirt throughout the palace. Seeing Tifa sitting there peacefully, he watched her silently for a moment before he swallowed and then stepped forward.
"Tifa?"
She looked up at once, crimson, almond-shaped eyes growing wide. Her lips pulled back into a smile, the genuine eruption of happiness at seeing him lighting him up from the inside. Cloud couldn't avoid the way he smiled back, and those strange feelings were percolating somewhere inside of him again.
"Hi, Cloud!" she greeted him enthusiastically. "Oh - your hair's all wet."
Cloud looked up, then brushed his palm across his messy spikes of hair. They were soaked through, and he frowned, running his fingers through them.
Tifa giggled, rising to her feet and putting her book down. She crossed over to him, standing at his side and reaching up with both hands. Cloud held his breath as she gently toyed with his blond strands, rearranging them with her lips still curled in a smile and her cheeks slightly pink. When she stopped and backed away a step, he finally exhaled.
"There you go! All better."
"T-thanks," he managed.
Tifa smiled again and nodded. "Were you with the chocobos again?" she asked.
"I was," he answered.
"I really want to ride one, one day. Especially the purple one."
"The purple one is named Chrysanthemum," he told her proudly. "Purple chocobos can cross water and they can also glide in the air."
Tifa's eyes lit up, and Cloud could feel his heart tether itself to them. "Do you think Papa will let me ride one, one day? I want to go to the northernmost isles. They say that the Stargazer flowers grow aplenty there."
Cloud shrugged, looking away. He wasn't sure how to answer this. Unlike Thea, Brian Lockhart was not very fond of him, and was even less of his daughter spending time with him. He didn't think he'd want her riding chocobos with him at all.
Luckily, Tifa was quickly distracted and changed the subject. She whirled around on her feet, turning to one corner of the parlor where a small basket lay. She picked it up and brought it over to him.
"Here you go!" she chirped happily at him.
Cloud raised an eyebrow, peering down to glance into the basket. Fat white flowers with bright yellow pistils stared up at him.
"Stargazers?" he asked her.
Tifa nodded excitedly. "That's right!" she told him. "For you. They've been growing on the banks of the Xy in abundance this season, so I made sure to grab some for you. I hope you like them."
Cloud felt his cheeks grow hot, and he accepted the flowers, desperate to look up into Tifa's eyes again but finding himself unable to. His throat felt choked as he tried to formulate a response, but before he could manage, the door to the parlor swung open with a bang, revealing Tifa's obasaan, Marle.
"Tifa!" she shouted. "You must come quickly!"
Tifa exchanged a quick, worried look with Cloud, but it faded quickly, replaced with the mask of her smile. And then she turned, picking up the hem of her kimono as she ran towards Marle. The obasaan - who was usually scowling at him - paid him little mind, ushering Tifa out in a flurry.
Sighing, Cloud looked down at the basketful of Stargazer lilies in his hand, the flutterings in his chest stirring again. Deciding to seek Tifa out again tomorrow, he left the parlor to head back down to the servant quarters.
But it was the rush of guards and servants, and the thundering of chocobo hoods beyond the walls of the palace that made Cloud aware that something was very, very wrong.
Cloud felt himself suddenly jostled by one shoulder as he lingered in the hallway, a palace guard named Kim whom he knew well from the kitchens stopping him with a shove. "You best get to your quarters and stay out of the way, Strife. The palace is being locked down."
"What's happening?" Cloud asked, ignoring the barked orders. "Why is everyone running and shouting?"
Kim stopped, dropping his hand from where it rest on his sword. He looked up and down the hallway, shaking his head at the way the palace shook from the movement within. He turned, looking back at Cloud.
"It's… it's the empress. She's been assassinated on her way back from the Southern Isles. We just received word from the only guardsman who survived the attack."
Cloud blinked, soaking in the words and trying to process them.
The Empress Thea.
Tifa's mother.
Dead.
Before he could speak, he heard the anguished cry pierce through the walls and ceiling above.
Tifa.