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Published:
2020-04-10
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1/1
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In Circles

Summary:

Tifa hates Midgar, and yet she stays, and she stays, and she stays.

Character study/pre-game gap-filler. Written for the Tifa Zine.

Notes:

Happy remake day! This was written for the Tifa Zine last year, so everything is based on original game canon.

Thanks to runicmagitek for betaing!

Work Text:

It doesn’t rain in Midgar.

Not the way she’s used to. The rains in Nibelheim had started in the mountains, ash-black clouds billowing over crooked peaks before darkening the valley beneath. Rain meant slick streets as the familiar paths of dirt and stone turned to mud. Meant she couldn’t make excuses to avoid the day’s chores.

Midgar isn’t like that. At least not the slums. They say the reactors dried up the sky years ago, but sometimes the clouds will change their mind. Even then, all that makes it down here are trickles that rust up the pipes.

Worse, it doesn't even sound like rain. A rare storm sounds like the Plate itself is about to collapse right on top of her. She keeps looking up, holds her hand out a few times, but not a single drop falls.

Tifa never thought she could feel underground outside.

There's a saying in Midgar: if you have to ask what it costs, you can't afford it.

It’s not something Tifa is proud of, now that it’s a pressing concern, but she had never worried about money. She can’t even remember touching it. Even her so-called tour guide job was handled by her father. Yet another thing she can’t go back and change.

Trust is the first thing she unlearns. Midgar’s only use for pretty little girls who don’t know the correct price of something is to bleed them dry. It’s only luck that lands her at the bar — luck, and her fists.

But she's grateful for it. Maybe this isn't what she dreamed of as a girl, but she's good at it. She learns her regulars, one by one. Learns their drinks, their names, their stories. Learns when to cut them off and when not to.

And she learns, bit by bit, about Midgar.

Midgar has no need for manners.

Not the ones she was taught, the please and thank you that were so imperative in tiny little Nibelheim, back when she knew every face and every name on all three streets. Planet help her if she forgot a ma'am or sir with one of the neighbors.

Here manners are a luxury at best and idiocy at worst. What Tifa took for basic courtesy instead signals her as an easy mark.

What Midgar doesn't expect is the ease with which she dispatches each and every pickpocket it sends her way. It's not how Tifa expected to build a reputation, but it's one she guards fiercely.

Fear is its own respect.

There are no plants in Midgar.

There's everything else, of course. Neon lights accost her from every angle, advertising everything from high-quality weapons (unlikely, down here) to exotic food (probably just monster meat) to daring new fashions (true). Everything down here smells of something, whether it's unwashed flesh or equally unpleasant perfumes to cover it. Tifa can't leave Wall Market without feeling grimy in one way or another.

(And yet, she knows she’s no better. The shower at the bar only works half the time.)

But no plants. Not even a weed sprouting up underfoot. Nibelheim's jagged peaks were hardly welcoming, but it's enough to make a girl downright homesick.

Except her home is the ash and cinders in her mouth and the scar across her chest and the laughter in her nightmares.

She can live without plants.

Midgar cannot survive without Shinra.

This is the most bitter lesson, and it makes Tifa want to scream and scream and scream. When she first arrived, she wanted to paint the walls with Shinra's ills — to tell everyone the truth about Nibelheim, and hold those monsters accountable for their crimes.

And she had told the doctor who'd treated her exactly that. Had laid out the whole story like a punctured wound. To her credit, the doctor had listened — but that was all.

"Why should I believe you?"

"What?" Tifa had stared at the doctor. "But I— it's the truth!"

"Sephiroth died in the war. And I've never heard of Nibelheim." The doctor gave her an expectant look. "That's what people will tell you. You're a fool if you think you can convince anyone otherwise."

It had taken months for Tifa to admit that the doctor had been right. Even offhand mentions of Sephiroth garner nothing but effusive responses. And nobody has heard of Nibelheim. Why would they? They can barely think past their own existence in Midgar, and Shinra controls the news.

The rage simmers, but it never fades. Never. She will never forgive Shinra. She will never forgive Sephiroth.

And she can be patient.

It's possible to feel lonely when you're surrounded by people.

It gnaws at Tifa in the cold, long nights, where the only sky she can gaze at for comfort is distant, barren metal. When she's at the bar, amidst laughing, drunk fools. When she’s out running an errand to Wall Market.

Sometimes she thinks she joined AVALANCHE not for the cause, but so she wouldn't be alone anymore.

Tifa has few kind words to say about Midgar. She has become accustomed to living here, but to say she likes it is a stretch. She needs to be here, for AVALANCHE. For revenge. For Shinra.

She hates the constant gray. Hates the dark and the cold and the acrid mako smell that should remind her of home but instead makes her queasy. Hates the complete lack of weather. Hates the cruelty, the constant violence, the despair that hangs over everyone and everything.

And yet, she stays.

Tifa’s not sure why, at first. She could leave. Could hitch a ride to Kalm, maybe even Junon. Could head back east — but where? She doesn’t have a home to go back to. There’s nothing left of Nibelheim but ashes and blood.

And Shinra is here. Shinra is everywhere, always has been, but it’s here. If she’s ever, ever going to get revenge, then she has to be here. She has to.

So she stays, and she stays, and she stays. She half-listens to Barret’s grand schemes, to Jessie’s technobabble, to Biggs and Wedge insisting that they’re going to get one over on Shinra. Days turn into months into years, and nothing changes, and nothing changes.

Until she finds Cloud.

And though her heart twists at the things he says (five years?), she knows she never would have found him if she'd left.