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There was something about the way Reno just swaggered in like he owned the Plate. Bright, messy red hair in a pile with a rat’s tail that made his pointed, angular features all the more rodent-like. Tattoos on his cheekbones, solidifying the fact that he probably got picked up off the streets. He was a Shin-Ra tool, arming a bomb with a burning cigarette between his lips, twirling a Shin-Ra-issued Electro-Mag Rod in his hands, uncaring in his actions and how they’d affect the lives of hundreds of people.
In that moment, Tifa had never wanted to murder a person more, but he’d slipped right past her in a quick escape that left her dizzy and full of loathing (for him, because he didn’t care about the consequences; for herself, because she wasn’t able to do anything about it).
But now, three years later, he was picking up girls at her newly re-established Seventh Heaven, drunk off too many shots, and singing along obnoxiously with the jukebox, arm slung around Cloud’s shoulders, nudging him to join in.
Tifa wonders, in the corner of her mind, if this is who he is without Shin-Ra.
(She likes him better this way.)
~
Forgiveness happens when you let go.
Tifa doesn’t let go of things easily, gripping with the edges of her mind at grudges she wants to hold if only because it makes her feel like she has a purpose. She hates Shin-Ra, they’re easy to load the blame on after all they’ve done. She hates Sephiroth, for killing her dad. And Sephiroth came from Shin-Ra too. Everything bad that’s ever happened is because of Shin-Ra. Blaming them makes it easy to throw herself into AVALANCHE’s cause and pretend to care about the planet when all she really wants is revenge. Maybe even closure.
(She even lost her best friend to Shin-Ra, only for him to come back broken and different, enough that she could barely recognize him beyond the familiar blonde spiked hair.)
Forgiveness happens when Reno walks into the bar, Rude and Elena flanking him, holding a fruit basket.
“Elena’s idea,” he drawls as he drops it on the wooden counter. Elena stiffly holds out a bouquet of flowers, and Rude adjusts his sunglasses. “Here’s to your grand re-opening!”
Tifa takes the flowers, cocking her head curiously to the side. “And what brings you to Seventh Heaven?”
She wants to be angry at them, for everything they put her and AVALANCHE through, but after two years, she’s not sure if she can. No matter how much they clashed because of their loyalties and ideologies, no matter how many orders they carried out like killing machines, she just… can’t.
“An apology,” Rude says, and Elena nods.
“Yes, we thought it was prudent to apologize,” Elena adds. “We know we can’t make up for the horrible things we did, but we figured we should start.”
Tifa wonders if she should swindle some money out of them, lie about having insurance on the bar that she’d never gotten the cheque for. Ask Shin-Ra to compensate. But Cloud wouldn’t take a handout from Shin-Ra, even if it was for something like this.
“Want a drink?” she asks instead, settling the flowers into a tall glass before pulling out four bottles of beer from the fridge and setting them on the counter.
(To starting over, Elena toasts, and Reno claps her on the shoulder and says she’s being far too formal.)
~
Reno still smokes. His drawl is still the lazy one that reminds her of country-boy hicks trying to fit into the city. He still wears something akin to that ill-fitting navy Turk uniform, except tailored slightly better and lacking the buttons.
He’s still the same Reno, except mellower. Grabbing for his Electro-Mag Rod, holstered in his belt at an angle akin to the short-swords Yuffie sometimes added to her arsenal, isn’t a reflex anymore at the sound of her voice. He’s different, subtly but surely.
He’s tired, skin under his eyes so translucent it may as well be blue altogether. He’s exhausted, shoulders drooping more than his bad posture normally held them at. He’s done, sinking into a booth at the bar and staring at the bright screen of his PHS, thumb lazily scrolling through his text feed.
His brand of cigarettes hits her nose like a wall when she goes to take his order, and he grins at her in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Long day?”
“You know it.”
When she brings his pint over and sets it down on the table with a thud , she wonders if she’s allowed to sit down with him like she does with everyone else. To talk to him like everyone else, like she’s catching up with an old friend even though he’s an old enemy. She figures that, one day, maybe she will be.
(She remembers the first time she saw Reno, standing at an explosives control panel, smoke curling up in a haze that punctured the crisp air so subtly that she wouldn’t have noticed it had he not stamped it out a moment later.)