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Even the stars are tired tonight.
That's what her father would have said about this kind of sky. At least, she's pretty sure. Almost entirely sure... little lights somewhere past an overcast that isn't quite thick enough to be called clouds. Isn't quite thick enough to hide them entirely. But dim.
Sleepy.
Maybe those weren't the exact words. But she was pretty sure that was the gist of the saying. Sleepy stars.
“Hey. I saved the last serving for you.” The voice is sweet, but not at all quiet, and she startles, because while the warm edges of the campfire and the voices of her companions still hover in her periphery, she'd thought she was far enough off to be forgotten.
But here is Aerith. Pink skirts bundled around a potato still wrapped in foil, and bruises on her dirty knees. “You must get really hungry, out here, rationing everything. You're so strong! I saw you flip that big bug right over your shoulder today! It must have weighed as much as you at least! I have trouble with especially heavy children sometimes, and I'm just about always hungry when we're out in the open like this.”
She drops herself into the dirt next to Tifa, cross-legged, at the very edge of the light, and pushes the still skirt-wrapped portion towards her. “Anyway here. I think it's cool enough now actually. And you earned it.”
“Thank you.” Tifa accepts, cautiously, but through her gloves it's easy enough to handle. “ And...you too. I don't think Barrett would be in such a good mood right now if you hadn't healed his shoulder. Just...”
“Just what?”
“Just you don't have to go running off to get the things attention, you know?” All Aerith does is shrug, as if that is more or less what she'd expected and she'd not yet decided whether she wanted to humor it. For a couple of moments, the conversation lapses, Tifa enjoying the warmth of the foil-wrapped potato through her gloves too much to unwrap it yet, and Aerith, leaning back on her hands, and starting to hum. Tifa almost finds herself wandering back towards the sky.
It doesn't last.
“So,” Aerith starts, one long-drawn, bending syllable “why are you hiding?”
“Hiding?”
“Yeah. Hiding. All out here by yourself, even though it's not your watch or anything. I thought you liked ghost stories? Yuffie has some great ones! Hey, do you think Vincent could glower more? More than usual? Because I'm pretty sure even he was getting some heebiejeebies for the one about the old man who kills the rat and on the windowsill and-”
“I think I've heard it.” Tifa interrupts, surprising herself, and not because she's not interested. Quite the opposite. Just thrown by the stirring of a memory so close to her cut-off one.
“Huh?”
“Yeah, I mean, I've heard it. When I was small. Used to go camping with my friends in the summer, and Charlie's sister. She was the oldest, so we'd always beg her to tell us the story about the old man and the rat. Even if sometimes we regretted it.” A small smile at the memory, to think of the delicious, controlled fright of childhood stories, after the things they'd seen in just the last few weeks? “I...didn't know anyone outside Nibelheim told that story.”
“Well, I don't think anyone in Midgar does. And I know why too! It's too creepy!” Tifa isn't sure if the exaggerated shiver on the word 'creepy' is meant to be comical, but...it is. And she begins to find herself easing out of the annoyance her interrupted musings had brokered.
“Well, I suppose there was a reason it was a campfire favorite.”
Another pause. Another chanced glance upwards.
“...I' ve never been camping.”
Tifa has liked Aerith from the beginning, liked the familiarity of her hiking boots, and the warmth behind all her bluster, but at this moment, it's a fight not to roll her eyes.
“Well, you're camping now aren't you?”
“That's not...”
Not. What else was there to say, really? Of course it wasn't. Tifa had to remind herself of the pain of lungs that missed mountain air, the scent of waving pines. She had never said it aloud, but sometimes, when the whole concept of 'planet', of 'revenge' seemed to big for her, she had drawn her courage from the memory of water running over rocks, and the smoothness of them both beneath her feet in Spring.
Had Aerith, theorized creature of the air and soil, even seen a pine tree before three days ago? Tifa remembered the way she had snapped a twig, surreptitiously, to chew the needles and pull a face. The way she'd hounded Cloud ever so slightly after pine sap.
“Aerith,” A hazard, “Is the campfire not enough for you? Maybe we'll get some marshmallow's at the next town?” There's a very small, very distant part of Tifa that means it as a tease, but mostly she asks the way she would ask Marlene, or even Yuffie or Red, but her laughter flounders at the wa that Aerith has caught her arms about her knee's, lips pulled tense at one corner.
“I'm...well I'm jealous actually.” The admission surprises Tifa enough that she turns, but not as much as the pout that flicker's across Aerith's face, shaken off quickly with a toss of brown ringlets. “I mean, I had my sliver of sunlight, in the garden. And rain, sometimes, but not so much anymore. That's still a lot more sky than most people get right? And it wasn't so bad, I could still feel it but it's not the same as-”
“Seeing?”
“Seeing.”
Another pause, each caught looking at the other out of the corner of their eye, trying to gauge.
Then Aerith, face still half hidden in her arms, begins to giggle.
And unsure what else to do, Tifa responds, couldn't have suppressed the urge if she had wanted to try. And then, that's all they can do, one silent, the other trying to be but failing miserably.
When they've both managed to quiet Aerith stands. “Maybe you can tell us the story tomorrow?”
“Maybe. I'll...I'll do my best. Thank you. For dinner.”
“Hey. I'm glad you got the whole sky, you know. You appreciate it.”
Left to herself again, but far from feeling distant, Tifa turns her attention back to the foil and starch still cooling in her hands, and begins to peel the silver away in an easy pattern.
Tifa is always grateful for friends, but she knows an alliance when it's offered, too. A personal one.