tampered | ongoing; closed

ongoing; closed

When; ? x time of x night -- CALL IT this Monday, the 8th
Rating; G~PG
Characters; Tifa Lockhart (

notmemories) & Aerith Gainsborough (

seekingsame)
Summary; Time and dynamics; nothing is ever simple. Girl talk makes everything better? If not easier.
Log;

Her hair was still damp as she tugged the brush through one last time, then pulled most of it back into a loose twist. She hummed to herself as she pushed at her bangs (they slid, immediately, back into place), as she leaned closer to the mirror and winked, as she rubbed her hands together and pretended they were warm.

Pretending was easy; she never had to think about it or even go through the motions, most of the time. Right now she could focus instead on her socks: fuzzy! green! with white no-slip flowers on their bottoms! Or on her nightgown, long sleeved and warm.

Having new things, squinting at a blemish under her ear; she hadn't even spent time without it, so it was just the same, wasn't it? That she woke up and had to remind herself to breathe, and settle into that old habit (not necessity), it wasn't so bad. And speaking of old habits... swallowing the name on the tip of her tongue, she flexed her fingers, looked down to her wiggling toes.

Shaking her head, Aerith fell back onto her bed.

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The time given to them was precious. Precious, in the way that someone who remained dead back in their world had come back to them, albeit in a foreign place, able to talk and laugh and cry and move and—and in all that, Tifa was grateful. Zack was included in this, of course, but she had only known the man for the span of barely a week. But Aerith—Aerith was special, in the way that Tifa was able to connect with her within the span of five minutes, able to finish her sentences by the end of the day, able to spend hours and hours talking about things that didn't really matter in the long run, able to be just girls in an adventure in which they truly seemed out of place.

She finished washing the dishes by the sink and set them aside, untying the apron ribbon behind her. Folding up the apron, she let it sit on the counter, before patting her hands dry on her shorts (athletic! black! white stripes on the side!), making her way towards her room. Except—

—things weren't going to well between her and Cloud, were they? What did she do wrong? was the first thing that came to mind, but... Cloud was Cloud. Maybe he needed some time alone. Maybe she wouldn't push him too hard. Furrowing her brows, Tifa let out a small sigh, looking towards the door to her own room, before looking to the other side of the apartment.

And before she knew it, she was in front of Aerith's door, knocking.

"Aerith?" A soft call.

Her bed, that was a new thing, wasn't it? A safe topic to muse on, too. Since leaving Midgar, "her bed" had been grass, or in an inn, at times shared with Yuffie or Tifa. New and old; she remembered her room in Sector Five, in her mother's house (but not her real mother).

A voice slipped into her thoughts, and Aerith lifted first onto her elbows, rising from her reverie. A beat, and she had bounced off the bed and toward the door, pressing a hand flat against the wood, over the knob.

"Tifa?" Of course, who else? The smile already in her voice, she swung open the door, wide and inviting. "Hi! Is anything wrong?"

Wrinkling her nose, as if able to smell the problem, she peered with too-wide eyes over the other woman's shoulder. No fire, but she could smell soap. A glance at Tifa's hands, and she thought, ah, lotion.

Edited 2010-03-07 08:25 (UTC)

In Tifa's supposedly everlasting strength, there was uncertainty. There was always uncertainty, and Tifa knew it. She wasn't strong, she wasn't infallible, she wasn't stable—she knew all this, and tried to hide it, for the sake of the people around her. The people around her didn't need someone weak to bog them down. They needed someone to cling to, to push them forward, to... always be a constant motion of positivity.

Snapping out of it, Tifa jumped a slight bit, shaking her head. "Oh..." she trailed off, biting her lower lip. "I'm just—" Lonely? No, that wasn't it at all. Tired? Frustrated? Neither of those, really, since she had dealt with worse things in her life. Confused? And then, suddenly:

"—can we talk? Like old times?"

That was it, wasn't it? She just needed to talk, like a normal girl to another normal girl. A boy and a girl talking was always different from a girl and a girl talking, wasn't it? That's the way things always went, no matter what.

Aerith knew Tifa. Not through and through, not with years of experience and growth and observation, not like a book she had read again and again, picking up new details and insights with each go. With them, it had been more instinctive, something clicking beneath the surface- not perfectly, not evenly, but still coming together. Maybe, back then, it had all come down to Cloud.

That Tifa had layers and layers beneath her smile, Aerith had always known- maybe so well because it was so familiar. Like a mirror. (With a better figure.) And Tifa had been her first girl friend, friend who was a girl, and it did matter- it was funny, but it mattered.

She had never stopped smiling, but her smile changed at the request, and she stepped back, giving Tifa room to enter. Like old times, huh? Closer to yesterday for her, but Aerith had already accepted the difference. What else could she do? "I'd like that."

Spinning more than pivoting, Aerith moved back to her bed and hopped into a seat next by the head. She patted the space next to her, before hugging a pillow to her chest.

And for some reason, when Aerith accepted her request, Tifa felt the weight of the world being lifted from her shoulders. It was strange, wasn't it? The fact that she was the same age as Aerith now, when before, she had always looked up to Aerith as someone older (even if the difference was slight!), someone wiser, someone with a better understanding of what was going on with the people around her. A better understanding of herself...? That too, Tifa lacked, back when they were all together, traveling.

Stepping into Aerith's room, she followed suit towards the bed and sat down at the spot next to Aerith, drawing the covers around her. A pause, and then a laugh. "Sorry, sorry," she finally said, "It's still a pretty bad habit of mine." She always used to do this, even back in the day, with a degree of comfort that was never apparent with anyone else, perhaps save for Yuffie.

"How have you been?"

(Never mind your lack of breathing, your coldness—it's okay, as long as you're here.)

Sometimes Aerith had felt older (felt older now, even though Tifa looked different, in those tiny, indistinguishable ways), older by that year or two and watching, an outsider stepping in, as Cloud and Tifa walked half-circles around one another. Other times, older by hundreds of years, her shoulders quivering under the weight of voices she couldn't untangle into meaning. Then, and more frequently it seemed, she was younger and sillier and Tifa, with too much age in her eyes as well, stood more mature.

They had balanced well, and it continued now- older, wanting to put her arms around the other girl and finger comb her hair, but younger, in the circles her heart would be walking if it could, under her skin.

She giggled, younger and teasing, "Still hogging the covers, huh?" and leaned her head for a brief moment against Tifa's shoulder, looking up at her through her bangs. Her shoulder was warm; Aerith straightened before she became too comfortable, or too something else.

"Well... you know me! Just the same. I think I can get a job at this flower shop... I was told I worked there, when I was here before." A pause, but not to acknowledge how strange that statement should have been.

"And you? It's looking really good!"

Perhaps she grew up too fast, starting from whenever the entire Nibelheim incident had happened. (Everyday, she counted the years, but sometimes, she didn't want to know just how long it had been.) She was a girl thrown into the world of adults in the span of a couple of days, and she learned to adapt, to not complain, to take things in stride—something she considered the polar opposite of Aerith, but once Tifa had set foot into her past, her memories, her burden, something she realized that they weren't so different after all.

When Aerith leaned against her, Tifa tensed, but that was how people normally reacted to the feeling of sudden coldness, right? But Tifa played it off, shaking her head, because Aerith was still Aerith, and it was a miracle that they were here, talking, laughing together once again. "I can't help it!" she replied back, teasingly defensive. "It's just so soft, and—"

Aerith always knew. Tifa smiled wryly as Aerith went on, listening and watching her movements, drawing her knees closer to her chest. "I'm in the same boat as you. That Seventh Heaven used to belong to me, when I was here before." It sounded odd, saying such a thing. "So if you think about it, there are people in this place that knows who we are but... we don't."

A pause.

"Creepy!"

Edited 2010-03-07 09:44 (UTC)

"Super creepy!" Aerith agreed, pulling a face at the thought.

Here, again, a selective focus: choose the lighter lens, that they were at an interpersonal disadvantage, as if well-spied upon. Not the heavier ones, of guilt at having forgotten others, of confusion at having time erased or possible double, other worlds branching off of other worlds. (And if she had come, then returned to death... but it wasn't merely death, had she before known the Lifestream?). She squeezed as much of the pillow as she could into her hand, inspecting her skin against the case. Her fingernails were dirty; she didn't much care for gloves, but cared too much for flowers and soil.

"They better not hold it against us," she breezed, all bravado in addressing a potentially heavier focus. "But... there must be something good to it. You've got the building still, and I guess... I've some references!"

It wasn't, she thought, what Tifa probably had on her mind. Or it was a small part, the way everything was interwoven and connected, nothing standing completely apart. Something arising because of this, which could only be here. Things like that.

"We should do our nails," she mused, almost at random, though as ever impractical. Tifa fighting with her fists, Aerith knuckle deep in the dirt; polish never lasted long, and chips, tears, and breaks were all too common.

But the Tifa of the past was different from Tifa of the present, long used to settling down, leaving her gloves off most times of the day. Her calluses long softened out (but still there, as reminders of their past), Tifa had grown idle, used to housework and everyday life—and for some reason, she didn't mind at all. This was the type of life she long dreamed of when she was young, after all, though some details were curtailed to fit reality.

"It would have cost us a lot to start from scratch, huh?" she replied, blanket around her like a child wearing an oversized parka. Hardly the image she'd show Cloud, because she was embarrassed of him seeing such a childish side of her. Odd, wasn't it, how a friend of the same sex brought out the most childish aspects of a person, like a boy being obnoxious or a girl resorting to her most childish memories and habits. She thought on Aerith's suggestions momentarily; an impractical idea, but what other chance in normalcy would they—Aerith—get, aside from now? Letting out a small laugh, Tifa nodded. "Sounds like a date."

"What colors were you thinking of? Pink, to match your outfit?"

"You've saved plenty of money! Building anew would've cost more than clean-up... probably."

Maybe? Honestly, Aerith had no clue. About manicure dates, however... (not that Aerith actually had much experience there, either).

Not as impractical then, for once- Aerith had noticed, but the change was so abrupt, without the years of shifting practice on her side, and so reflexively she thought of Tifa's hands as rough and oft bandaged at day's end. Only after speaking had she wrenched her gaze from her own nails, moving to Tifa's, where she found that reminder of time.

"We could do a whole... thing! With face masks, made out of honey or cucumbers. I was thinking... not pink, hee. Say... green? Or maybe blue!"

They weren't typical, feminine nail colors, but different wasn't bad. And she hadn't always worn pink. Her bow was five years old now; she'd kept as good care of it as she could, but it had faded some, frayed some on one end.

"Oh! But we better make sure we don't scare Cloud with our masks. Or maybe we should?" Laughing, Tifa poked her head out from the covers and let it sit on her shoulders, thinking a bit at the choice of colors. "Not pink, not pink... yellow? Or maybe pearl. Pearl sounds nice, doesn't it?" Because it covered, but never fully hid. Despite everything, she had the backings of a pampered countryside town girl. And in her choice of everything, it showed. Painfully so.

There was a long pause, before she spread her legs out, toes touching the cold floor below her.

"Say..."

A pause. It was a question she had been wanting to ask since first meeting Aerith, and a question that prompted her to knock on her friend's door in the first place. Tifa fidgeted for a moment's worth, before taking in a deep breath. Say it, say it—you two are friends, aren't you? This is a fair game question. Nothing hard about it. And so, exhaling, Tifa continued:

"... you and Zack used to go out, right?"

Edited 2010-03-09 09:21 (UTC)

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