[fic] FFVII: Gunpowder & Firecrackers (chapter 7)
FINAL FANTASY VII
Gunpowder and Firecrackers
[Other header stuff: PG-13, Tifa/Rude, AU to DoC, spoilers up to end of AC]

It is fifteen years after Meteor, thirteen years after Kadaj's defeat. Rufus Shinra, leader of the world philanthropic organization Green Earth, has been having odd dreams about Cloud Strife, about Sephiroth, about the mysterious town of Nibelheim. In a world where peace is as fragile and elusive as the voices of the lost Ancients, the old members of AVALANCHE and Shinra struggle to piece together the secrets of the Lifestream and Jenova's legacy in a race against time to save the ones they love.


VII. Tifa


"Denzel's missing."

Reno's mouth was set in a tight, compressed line of worry, shoulders slumped and exhausted. Tifa could see him leaning heavily on the doorjamb. He hadn't looked hurt or tired when he had picked her up at the Corel Airport on a borrowed scooter, whisking her through traffic with only a few clipped words. She'd been worried then, but in the dim lamplight, she decided that he looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Just like her.

"What?" she said dumbly.

Reno took two more steps into the room, his hand grasping at his belt for a weapon that wasn't there. "Marlene just called. Reeve's there at the bar now with her. He'd met Denzel for lunch two days ago and no one's seen the kid since."

Denzel, missing? He'd been gone for days on end before on deliveries, just as Cloud had, and Tifa had never paid it any mind. Out of all the men in her life, those two were the ones she had tried not to think too hard about.

"Maybe he's just out on a delivery," she told Reno hopefully. "He's done it before. Sometimes he's so absentminded that he forgets to leave a note."

Reno frowned. "I hope so. Marlene's holding up pretty good, but seems like Reeve's the one who wants to mobilize the city for a manhunt. I wouldn't put it past him, either. He's got the funds."

"He's watched Denzel grow up," Tifa said softly. "Practically the boy's foster father. I…" she trailed off. She what? She was in Corel, had spent the entire day yesterday sitting by Rude's bedside and watching him sleep, soothing him in soft tones when he spasmed from what seemed like black nightmares. Cloud, he repeated over and over. No, Cloud, don't do this. After the sun had set and the nightmares grew worse, Tifa had called Reno into the room, and fled Rude's hoarse whispering of the name of the man she still loved.

Reno had found her later slumped morosely over an untouched drink in the town's only bar, a tiny wooden affair that looked like it had been constructed out of more of the wreckage of Barret's hometown and then whitewashed, though it was a sight better than the ramshackle slums that had occupied the scrub-brush slopes fifteen years ago during their chase of Sephiroth. "Lockhart?" his voice had said from behind her, and she did not turn, just watched him out of the corner of her eye as he slid onto the stool next to her and cupped his head in his hands. It was the first time she'd seen Reno enter a bar and not order anything.

"Corel looks nice," she told him flatly. "Congratulations."

"Don't say things you don't mean."

As usual, Reno wore his sharp tongue on his sleeve. "I was being genuine," she said. "I hadn't been back to Corel since before-" she stopped. "Never mind," she amended quickly. "Anyway, you guys have done a good job in the eight years since then."

She was half afraid to look at him just in case the look on his face was one of pity, but when Reno spoke, it was with his usual jaunty carelessness. "I take no credit," he said blandly. "I'm just one of the lackeys. Congratulate Tseng or Cid Highwind whenever you see them. They're the ones putting in the real work - Tseng with the manpower and Highwind with the transport."

Tifa took a sip of her drink, decided she didn't like it, and pushed it to the side. "Want some?"

"If you're not drinking it, it means the drink sucks, so no."

She almost smiled at that. "Thanks. I think."

"Rude's awake," Reno said.

It took her a few seconds to decide a correct response. "That's good," she said. "I'll go see him after we leave here."

"I'm going back out to Nibelheim tonight." Reno hesitated, curling his fists as if trying to test the waters. "I was hoping you'd come with me."

The babbling of voices and usual bar din roared in her ears and she clenched her fingers on the glass of her unfinished drink, half-wishing for her gloves so she could shatter it into a million pieces. The dream she'd had a week ago flared to life in her mind again - Sephiroth silhouetted against the roaring flames, the buster sword heavy in her hands, her pleading voice asking why. Why, Sephiroth, why?

The heavy beams and tubes of the reactor ceiling, with that one name imprinted over and over again.

JENOVA

"Did Rude say anything to you?"

Rude. No, Tifa wanted to say. Rude hasn't said anything to me. I can guess.

"Tifa?"

"I'm...sorry," she said, and knocked over her stool in her eagerness to flee that place. She wasn't quite sure where she was going, except that interior of the bar was too hot and too bright, and the dry Corel night air was cool, dusty, someplace where she could lose herself in the scrub brush and desert vegetation dotting the moonlit hills. The thick tread of her sensible hiking boots were muffled on the smooth, paved roads, and she did not remember the way back to the place where Rude lay, but that did not quite matter.

Nevertheless, it was without too much surprise that she found herself standing at his door, raising one hand to knock softly, sliding it open at his muffled permission to enter.

Rude's face looked unnaturally pale in the soft light, but his expression was one of a man well-rested and healing, and the swelling around his eyes and mouth was almost gone. She resisted the urge to run to him and bury her face in his chest and cry her eyes out. Tifa Lockhart was not that weak. Instead, she went to the dresser and poured him a glass from the stone pitcher, which had been full of ice cubes five hours ago and now was full of lukewarm water.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been worse," he said, accepting the glass with a murmured thanks and downing it in one gulp. He turned to place it on the table, then glanced at her, his gaze softening.

"Thank you for coming after me."

She shifted uncomfortably. "It's nothing. Reno called, and...well. It just didn't seem right that I should stay in Edge when you were-"

His good arm came around her and she found herself falling back against his chest onto the bed in the position that she had so hoped to avoid earlier. The tears were inevitable, and she wrapped her own arms around him and sobbed. His hands stroked her hair in smooth motions, his breath warm and familiar against her cheek. "Tifa," he said. "I'm all right. Don't worry about me."

She didn't dare look up at him when her tears ran out, simply snuffled against his shirt and closed her eyes, listening to the beat of his heart. Rude was a big man - big hands and big shoulders and a large, muscular chest. She always felt small nestled into the crook of his arm. Cloud, on the other hand-

"I was afraid," she told him, speaking into the folds of the blanket wrapped loosely around him. "I thought - well, Reno didn't give me details. I didn't even get to tell Denzel-" she stopped, stiffening. Rude must have sensed the change immediately, because he shifted and let her roll over, push herself against the bed and stare at him with wide eyes. "Rude, Reeve says that Denzel is missing."

He frowned. The expression made several small creases between his eyes, which she usually found endearing when the situation was not so serious. "Are you sure he's just not out on an unexpected delivery?"

Tifa stared at the wall, trying to bore holes in it with her eyes. "I'm hoping that's the case." She licked her lips. "If he's not back by the day after tomorrow, I'm going to look for him."

Cloud would have railed at her, telling her it was a stupid idea. Her job was to run the bar, and if anyone was going to do the looking and sweaty, unpleasant work, it was Cloud Strife. Rude, on the other hand, tightened his arm around her shoulders, and said, "Where do you plan to look?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "But I already lost one man. I'm not losing another."

Rude was quiet. "Did Reno tell you?" he asked at last. "About Nibelheim."

"He wants me to go with him tonight."

"Don't go," Rude said, and the quiet undercurrent in his voice was so suddenly deadly that she twisted around to stare at him again, at the bright piercing eyes too often hidden behind dark glasses, the thick eyebrows and the shadow of unshaven skin around his mouth, the high arch of his nose and the way his cheekbones shaped the planes of his face that she had come to cherish.

"Part of me says that I shouldn't let Reno go alone," she admitted, trying not to show that Rude's surge of passion over the topic had unnerved her somewhat. "On the other hand, there's Denzel. I'll be going somewhere either way. I can't sit here and do nothing while the world turns around me, Rude."

"I understand," he said. "But don't go to Nibelheim."

Ire rose in her for a brief moment, anger that this man, now that they were engaged to be married, would be trying to dictate her life. But that was short-lived, and she drew her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "I don't know what to do," she whispered. "I'm scared, Rude. My life seems to be coming apart at the seams, and I can't stop it. I'm a fighter...at least I thought I was. But I feel so...helpless."

Rude's hand slipped down to the small of her back and rested there, a warm reminder of his presence. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes," she told him quietly. "And I understand that's the reason you don't want me to go to Nibelheim. But if there's something that has to do with-"

"It has nothing to do with you," he said harshly, and then swallowed. "Tifa. Please."

"Rude, Reno showed me the star pendant. And you were talking in your sleep."

His gaze met hers for a moment and then shifted, looking somewhere beyond her, far away beyond the wall and the borders of Corel into the wilderness outside this small oasis of civilization. "Forgive me," he said. "I'm just trying to protect you."

A surge of an emotion she could not name, along with a reckless boldness, rose within her and she unwrapped her arms from her knees, crawling forward and slipping under the blanket, pressing up against Rude's warm body with her own. "I know," she told him, stroking his face gently with her hands. "But I'm past the point of needing protection."

He closed his eyes. "Then tell me what you do need, Tifa."

The ghost of a memory flitted before her. I'm the same Cloud you grew up with, aren't I?

"Rude..." she whispered, entwining his good hand with one of hers, "I need some time...Just give me a little time."


They lay like that for a while, holding each other and drowsing, until Tifa felt Rude's breathing deepen and slow and the injured man slept. She untangled herself from him and got up softly, shivering as the chill desert night air hit her skin, pulling the blankets around him and kissing him lightly on the forehead, and then left his room.

She followed the hallways of the hospital aimlessly for a while, pacing with her hands clasped behind her back, half wishing for her old combat gloves that were packed safely in her suitcase. She had taken them on a whim, opening the dusty old safe behind her bed for the first time in eight years and pulling out the Premium Heart. The gloves were worn but clean, the materia slots empty. All the materia was hidden in another box at the back of the safe, and she'd taken that container out, too, crouched over the open treasure chest of softly sparkling globes, and feeling horribly low.

In the end, she'd fitted half of the materia slots and shoved the box back into the safe, as if filling them all would have broken some unspoken taboo. The materia she'd chosen was nothing powerful; Knights of Round they'd given to Yuffie as well as most of the other powerful summon materia. After the incident with Kadaj, the former ninja had whisked the box of it away to Wutai, and as far as Tifa knew, it was still there. Nanaki had departed back to Cosmo Canyon with most of the party's command materia. The materia she and Cloud kept in the safe was more the harmless stuff - fire, ice, lightning, a cure spell or two. She had hoped that she would never have to use it again.

"What should I do?" she wondered aloud, pausing at one of the large picture windows along the corridor. Whoever had designed the new Corel hospital had had an eye for beauty - the window framed the mountains to the northwest, where the Corel reactor had once loomed and now where there was nothing but rolling hills and stars as far as she could see. A shooting star flickered, disappeared behind the mountain peaks.

She'd leave tomorrow morning, she decided. It had nothing to do with either Rude or Cloud. She would not let it. Even if Rude had not protested so strongly against her going to Nibelheim, Denzel was her immediate concern; she would go back to Edge and talk to Reeve, find out what he and Denzel had been discussing over lunch and how he was sure the boy was missing, then see if Marlene had seen anything suspicious. Marlene was her dependable one, while Denzel was the dreamer, always fantasizing about something bigger outside the city in which they lived and the life to which he had been born. Sometimes she felt guilty for not telling him the whole truth about Cloud and Sephiroth, but she'd always told herself that he didn't need to know.

The past, as Cloud had always said, was past, and the only thing they could do was go on living.

"And even that's a lie now," she whispered, pressing her forehead against the glass. A fierce sort of sorrow swept over her and left a burning in its wake. She was glad now she'd packed her gloves; she'd take one of the Green Earth motorbikes out tomorrow instead of going back to Costa del Sol on the airship. The bike was almost as fast, and she could use a good fight or two with some monsters.

I'm a fighter, she had told Rude. Tifa Lockhart did not sit and mope. Tifa Lockhart stood and acted, and that was what she would do.

She didn't hear the footsteps down the hall until the figure appeared out of the corner of her eye. She thought it was Reno, turned to tell him that she was sorry about earlier, but she couldn't go with him. She had to see if Denzel was all right before anything else.

"I don't-" she began, and then stopped in surprise.

The girl - no, woman - in the dim nighttime lighting was muscular and slim beneath a light jacket and functional work pants, the round face no longer childish, her black hair grown out long and a sharpness in her gaze that hadn't been there eight years ago. The Conformer, giant and jagged-edged, was strapped to her back and should have dwarfed her, but instead looked right, natural, merely another extension of the Wutai lady's dangerous grace.

"Tifa!" Yuffie Kisaragi exclaimed, a smile lighting her features. "Reno said I'd find you here."