#seventh queue

poetry starters / accepting !! ( @martialhartist )

❛ really, you think so, tifa?  i never really thought about it, honestly. ❜ the cetra had turned her attention after staring at the bright lights in the night sky. obviously, they were the stars that twinkled and the moon had kept the night well lit. hearing tifa’s words itself made her blink a eye and tried to give it some thought. maybe, she was right. for aeris, she really never considered the night to be filled many different lights. it is how one see’s it as such, of course.

but for aeris, most of her attention was directed to how peaceful it was. maybe too quiet for most but it was perfect to her such as the weather was calming. who knows, how many nights that she could experience like this left. she made the most of it by enjoying it. knowing the next morning, they would have to continue with their adventure and whatever else that might be unexpected waiting for them.

“Of course! It’s funny, isn’t it? I wonder if the stars are always watching us up there...”

Celestial guardians of the night. It’s so pretty. Tifa shifts in her seat, arms folded against the lacquered window frame of the Gondola and every time she blinks a different color sparks for a moment behind her closed eyes. Red to white, white to yellow, yellow to green, green to blue. A flourish of artificial color washes over the winding arches of Chocobo racing tracks where a flurry of birds awash against the clamoring unseen crowd below dip into the final turn before the telltale chime of a victor sings up towards them in passing.

While the handful of attractions at the Gold Saucer were truly all fun and games Tifa feels the most content riding the Gondola for a quiet and almost homey getaway with someone she trusts who won’t bar their emotions away like a certain spikey haired Ex-SOLDIER. Aeris is perky as the flowers she effortlessly seemed to make bloom in the slums, shedding a light from the church.

SOFT ANGST STARTERS | ACCEPTING

Prompto didn’t know what to say. He usually was good when it came to comfort other people, but this time, he didn’t know what to say because he felt the same. Noctis was gone. His best friend, his brother, was gone. Of course, for now, he helped with the rebuilding of Insomnia and also slowly started to think about opening his own photos studio, but it was still so PAINFUL.

He smiled sadly in Tifa’s direction before he gently patted her shoulder. “I know what it is, trust me. I know it because I wasn’t ready either. Losing a friend is… the worse.”

The bad, the worse.

From the day the Citadel and their beloved Insomnia fell misfortune seemed to favor them like a second scourge. So much inevitable loss with their royal family  severed and all hope for the rise of a new dawn, their new future consumed in eternal darkness. Tifa pauses with a gut twisting silence just as the doors ease open, bell chime calling her from reminiscing on the dreaded fantasy that sentenced their entire world to harsh reality as another weary citizen finds their place behind the bar. She nods towards the golden gunslinger with a smile in return.

Oh, how they would both miss this–

“For now, we can.” Celes stopped to ponder for a moment. “Soon, I’m joining SOLDIER. When I come back, Tifa, I will be a better woman. I’ll do my best to protect you.”

Celes rose from the ground, approaching a bush of white roses. This bush was her very childhood - she had helped her mother plant it when she was still very little. Taking a single rose in her hands, Celes returned to Tifa. “That… is my promise to you.” She whispered as she placed the rose in Tifa’s hair, just above her ear.

– moments like these that they wished could go on forever.

SOLDIER, the mighty ShinRa military force...

Tifa nearly muses alound, lips pursing as thoughts scattered like plucked petals taking to the wind beneath them, her thoughts held tightly to such a proclamation- a promise. Their promise made of moonlit serenity and twinkling stars. Though she wants more than anything to smile underlying worry and realization force her to hide silent woes against the arch of Celes’ shoulder where carmaine eyes squeeze tightly shut in effort to chase her uneasiness away.

It was finally happening. Her childhood friend, her Celes was leaving her with nothing more than the sweet scent of flowers carried from their secret getaway spot and the promise of becoming her hero. 

Like... Sephiroth.

Once the rose is placed Tifa can no longer deny herself, a heart forever yearning beneath their Nibelheim sky, arms wrapping around the other’s neck tightly if only to keep here there forevermore. 

Locke actually feels a little guilty for coming to vent like this. It wasn’t exactly planned. His feet just seemed to carry him here. Strange how all paths in Edge somehow converge on Seventh Heaven. Tifa has a way about her that leads one to believe that she has all the answers, but she never gives them away directly. No, she merely helps one figure out the answers for himself.

The restlessness in his heart doesn’t currently have a name, but he hopes maybe she can help him identify it. He takes a long sip of the drink and feels it burn a cleansing path all the way down to the pit of his gut.

“Sorry,” he says, a little sheepish. “I know you probably spend all damn day listening to people’s problems. I just needed some good booze and this’s the place to get it.”

Okay, they probably both know the good company is also part of it.

“I’m just… tired. Of all the fighting and the greed. I don’t know if I wanna give up on myself. I just want to… take a break. Leave my body behind and take my brain on vacation somewhere. You know what I mean?”

Tired... of all the fighting, the greed. Their enemies, friends taken from them and the sadness of their memories left longing, gone. 

She can’t help the way her expression hardens for a moment’s worth all while the remaining patrons continue enjoying their fill around them. Never a glass half empty around here they say. That’s just what keeps them coming back to Seventh Heaven she’d guess. Some were residents of Edge since before the crumbling remnants of Midgar were unearthed and transfigured into what was only meant to be their home after the crisis of the planet. All she can do is smile and push on for them, the familiar faces and voices accompanying them. Tifa is more than relieved when he apologizes, easing the glass away to offer a refill and reassurance where a similarly aching heart surely needed it.

She nods, only stepping away to return with a small tray of warm assorted bread sticks and sets it between them.

He’s back.

Cloud- not the Cloud that once turned tail and left them with only the glimpse of his fleeing back and sad rumors only hinting towards his trail in Fenrir’s fading smoke. Not the Cloud was so wearily downtrodden he clung to his woes like a vice, never looking forward and always behind.

Not the Cloud that always left himself behind.

When he smiles it’s as if the stigma had been completely lifted. From Gaia, from the children, from him. He’s renewed with a telltale light that trickles eternally from betwixt the glistening cracks of the church roof as Tifa kneels beside him carefully clutching the batch of flowers they picked together to her chest.

Even though flowers were still as rare a sight in the slums they never stopped growing here even after she had come and gone. Marlene ties a pink ribbon at the stems to form a bouquet and when they stand still everything glows between glancing smiles and ethereal whispers. Cloud takes Denzel by the hand and Tifa barely makes out anything beyond “let’s go home” as she mouths an unheard thank you to the maiden who watched over them from the lifestream and beyond.

Aerith never left. She’s always been here, smiling back down on them when they needed it the most, a guiding beacon pointing them towards home when all seemed lost. Fingers smooth petals gingerly and she nods towards the wolf and the two children waiting at the church door.

★☆★; MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS SENTENCE STARTERS

“You’re right.”

A glass is set between them in offering, liquid brimming with amber luminescence as froth dances against the rim and condensation threatens to bleed like lost secrets between friends. He’s usually bright as Gaia’s stars even on an overcast night but Tifa knows optimism can only go so far until even the most well kept prickles of pain push to the surface, something physically ugly and visible. 

It was the truth of their stolen youth and plagued world, a scourge that had come and gone but never to be forgotten.

Instinctively, a hand presses just beneath her abdomen and gloved fingertips hesitant to trace the ends of the most personal mark marring her history hidden just beneath the hem of white undershirt pause. It still aches sometimes. The mark left by Sephiroth. 

Sephiroth, SOLDIER, Mako Reactors, ShinRa… 

A part of her truly did hate them all but they were memories now like so many other things locked deeply in the splintered boxes meant to cage hardened hearts. Finally, she nods towards the concoction laid out on the counte rtop for him moments prior, a hopeful smile touching the corners of her lips. 

True, humans might change but they, they- the planet’s only hope would keep fighting.