#ifd2021

The mountain took all kinds of people: photographers, thrill-seekers, barefoot spiritualists who wanted a word with the planet itself and all sorts from Shin-ra, researchers and infantrymen and simple mechanics who spent the hike up murmuring about ways to build a lift system, how to land an aircraft.

She always told them: “Well, if you figure it out, that’ll put me out of the job.” And she’d smile like she wanted them to do it.

It was actually because she knew they couldn’t.  The only way up Mount Nibel was on two feet and two hands and maybe a walking stick for city-sorts who didn’t want to place their fingers on the cool, rough stone.

Tifa knew that better than anybody.

~*~

She had bummed a cigarette off of one of the drivers from the latest Shinra visitors, not because she particularly enjoyed smoking, but smoking was a good excuse to spend time with visitors who didn’t want anything from her, quiet people who actually knew what was going on across the rest of the world.

This one still didn’t know anything about Cloud.

“If I did, I’d tell you,” he said.  “Not even sure the big guy could stop me,” he jerked his head towards the upper floor of the inn as he said ‘big guy’.  A single lit window cut through the autumn evening dim from up there.  “A person’s a person and sometimes they get away from you.” Behind the window and the remark, Mount Nibel glistened in the darkness, copper black stone and mako green and the red lights blinking on the Shinra facilities scattered along the paths.

Tifa nodded.

“So aren’t you scared of that thing?”

“Aren’t you scared of the ‘big guy’?”

“I was more afraid of my manager when I worked in customer service.  You?” he grinned around his smoke.

“Well, the truth is, maybe I should be, but the mountain already tried to kill me and it didn’t do a very good job.” She lets that hang between them, heavier than the hot ash they’re each leaking into the grass.

“Huh,” said the driver.  “You don’t say.  Well, if that’s your attitude? You want to know about your friend, you ask the big guy alone.  He doesn’t like groups, but he knows more than the loud guy.”

I was a lot more than she expected to hear from him and the cigarettes weren’t even half over.  She could have pushed her luck, tried for even more.

But the evening was pleasantly cold and she had something else to consider.  She ended up talking to the driver about bartending until the light on the second floor of the inn went out and then neither of them said goodnight.

~*~

It wasn’t like she was going to lie to him or manipulate him.  She was going to do what she always did: guide him.

Just into an answer besides up the mountain.  It wouldn’t be too difficult to separate him from the others just for a minute or two.  Then she would ask and she might not get an answer.  But if there was no Cloud at the end of the conversation, she’d still get to tell people she’d showed the Sephiroth himself the very best secret mako pool on mount Nibel.

One not even Shinra had found because neither she nor her mother had ever showed it off.  It had been theirs, a shimmering secret.

Which might now end up ruined if Sephiroth remembered the way, told the company, but the place was already a little bit ruined for Tifa.

It was the last place she’d seen her mother alive.

~*~

They set out early in the morning, the dew along the path still smelling of iron against the old equipment researchers before Shinra had junked rather than drag home.

She made sure to tell the party: “It looks more intimidating than it is.  It’s just grown out with the mako power, kind of like some of you.

Zack laughed.  He started making rude jokes with a few of the guards about just what parts of them had grown and what hadn’t.  

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