Chapter 5: Acting the part
A week later, the air in Sector 3 didn’t smell like rust and despair. It smelled like overpriced coffee and the faint, chemical freshness of filtered air. Sunlight, real sunlight not filtered through a plate, felt alien and overly bright on my skin. I waited on a polished stone bench outside a transit station, watching the clean, orderly crowds flow past.
Then I saw her.
She emerged from the stream of people, and my breath caught in a way that had nothing to do with operational security. The dress was white, a simple sundress with thin straps that dug into the smooth slopes of her shoulders. It clung to every curve, the fabric stretching taut over her breasts before cinching at her waist. A deliberate cutout revealed a palm-sized expanse of her toned, defined stomach, the skin looking impossibly smooth and sun-kissed. The skirt ended just above her knees, swaying with her confident stride. She’d done something with her hair, letting it fall in soft waves instead of her usual practical ponytail. A pair of stylish sunglasses were perched on her head.
She was a vision of topside ease and casual wealth. She was also, unmistakably, Tifa Lockhart—a predator in pastel, the muscle in her calves flexing with each step. She spotted me and a smile broke across her face, not the warm bar-owner smile, but something brighter, more performative. A mistress’s smile.
“You’re late,” I said, standing up. My voice was light, teasing.
“You try finding shoes that look this good and don’t kill your feet,” she shot back, giving a little twirl. The skirt flared. “Well?”
I let my gaze travel over her, slow and appreciative, a man surveying a luxury purchase. “Money well spent,” I declared, leaning in to brush a kiss against her cheek. Her skin was warm. She smelled of something clean and floral, a world away from the Starlight Inn’s musk. “You look incredible.”
“Good,” she whispered against my ear, her playful tone dropping for a second. “That’s the point, right?”
“That’s the point,” I confirmed, taking her hand. Her fingers laced with mine, a practiced gesture. We looked the part.
The real estate agent’s name was Marla. She was a sharp-faced woman in her fifties with kind eyes and a no-nonsense bun. Her handshake was firm. “Ron, Tifa. A pleasure.” Her gaze flicked between us, noting the age difference, the way Tifa leaned into my side. She didn’t bat an eye. “I have three properties to show you. All discrete. All with flexible lease terms.”
The first place was a sterile white box in a secure complex. It smelled of new paint and emptiness. “Excellent security,” Marla chirped, pointing out the reinforced door. Tifa wandered to the window, which looked out onto another, identical building. She nodded politely, her face a mask. “It’s very… safe,” she said.
The second was a one-room loft with industrial piping exposed on the ceiling. “Very modern,” Marla offered. Tifa ran a finger along the dusty surface of a concrete countertop. “It’s got character,” she said, but her voice was flat. She was humoring the process.
The third building was older, a pre-Mako era structure with actual brickwork. The elevator was small and groaned on the way up. “The previous tenant left suddenly,” Marla explained, not elaborating. She unlocked the door to unit 407.
The smell hit us first. Not stale air, but the faint, clean scent of citrus cleaner and, underneath, a hint of old wood. Sunlight flooded the main room from a wall of windows.
Tifa stepped past Marla and me. She took three steps into the center of the empty living space and stopped.
Her back straightened. Then, slowly, as if drawn by a magnet, she walked to the windows.
The view wasn’t of another plate or a maze of steaming pipes. It was of the city’ sprawling edge, the geometric madness of Midgar giving way to a rust-colored badland, and beyond that, a sliver of impossible, brilliant blue.
The ocean.
I’d seen it a hundred times. From ships, from cliffs. It was geography. To someone born under a plate, who’d only ever known a world of metal and gloom, it might as well have been a myth.
She didn’t make a sound. She just stood there, her hands coming up to rest flat against the cool glass. Her posture, usually so collected, was utterly still, arrested. The sunlight wrapped around her, glinting off the silver buckle of her dress strap, turning her hair a deep, glossy black. The white fabric of her dress seemed to glow.
Marla started talking about square footage and utility hookups. I held up a hand, cutting her off gently. “Give us a minute?”
The agent nodded, a knowing smile touching her lips. “I’ll be in the hall.”
The door clicked shut. The silence in the sun-drenched room was vast, filled only by the distant, muffled hum of topside traffic.
I moved to stand beside Tifa, not touching her. I looked at the view, then at her profile. Her amber eyes were wide, taking in the endless blue. Her lips were slightly parted. There was a vulnerability on her face I’d only seen in the dim aftermath of sex, never in full daylight.
“You can see it,” she breathed, the words barely audible. “It’s real.”
“It’s real,” I confirmed.
A single tear escaped, tracking a clean line down her cheek. She didn’t sob or shake. She just let it fall, quickly wiping it away with the back of her hand as if annoyed by its betrayal. “Sorry,” she muttered, her voice thick. “It’s stupid. It’s just… water.”
“It’s not stupid.” I finally reached out, my hand settling on the small of her back, over the soft cotton of her dress. I could feel the heat of her skin, the definition of her spine beneath. “It’s a reason.”
She leaned back, just a fraction, into my touch. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and when she spoke again, the emotion was banked, covered by a practical veneer. “The kitchen’s small. But the bathroom has a real tub. Not a stall.” She turned her head to look up at me, her eyes still shiny. “I want this one.”
“Then it’s yours.”
Dinner was at a seafood place with linen tablecloths and waiters who spoke in hushed tones. The lighting was low, candles flickering in glass globes. Tifa ordered a fish I’d never heard of, and a glass of white wine. I stuck to whiskey, neat.
The performance continued. She laughed a little too brightly at my jokes, her hand often finding my arm across the table. She fed me a forkful of her appetizer, her fingers brushing my lips. To anyone watching, we were exactly what we were supposed to be: a mercenary flush with Gil, lavishing it on a beautiful, younger woman he’d pulled from the gutter.
But between the acts, in the quiet moments when the waiter was gone, her mask slipped. She’d look out the window at the clean, lit streets, her expression pensive. She’d swirl her wine, watching the legs form.
When our main courses arrived, she took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and set her fork down. “This is better than anything I’ve ever cooked,” she said, not with envy, but with simple factual regret.
“You’re a great cook,” I said.
“I make stew, Ron. And fried things. This is… something else.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. The clink of silverware was loud. I watched her, the candlelight dancing in her eyes. She was navigating this new world with the same fierce adaptability she used in a fight, but the cost was visible in the tight set of her shoulders.
“Tifa,” I said, my voice dropping. The ambient chatter of the restaurant covered us. “The plan. You’re okay with it?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She took a slow sip of wine, her gaze fixed on the flame between us. “The cover is solid,” she said finally, her voice professional, analytical. “Moving here, being seen with you… it explains any contact, any transfer of funds. It gets the Turks looking at my ass in this dress instead of at manifests for blasting gel.” She looked at me. “It’s a good play.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She put her glass down. Her fingers traced the stem. “Zeke,” she said, the name a hard little stone dropped on the table. “When he found out… about the soldiers at the bar… he looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in. He said he couldn’t be with a whore.” She said the word cleanly, without flinching. “Now I’m going to be one officially. For a better class of client, I guess.” A bitter smile touched her lips.
“It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” Her eyes met mine, challenging. “I’m trading access to my body for resources. The currency is just different. The scale is bigger.”
“The choice is yours,” I said, holding her gaze. “You can walk away from this table. From the apartment. The money dries up, but you walk away clean. The other thing… in the bar… you didn’t have that choice. Not really. Not if you wanted to keep the lights on and the cause funded. That’s the difference.”
She absorbed that, her defiance softening into something more weary. “I know,” she sighed. “And I’m not walking away. The cause… it needs this. I need this. A place with a view of the ocean.” She said it like a prayer, a tangible piece of a better world. “But it feels strange. To willingly put on the costume.”
“We’re both in costume,” I reminded her. “The smitten merc. The kept woman.”
She leaned forward, the candlelight carving shadows under her cheekbones. “And what happens when the curtains close, Ron? When we’re not performing for Marla or the waiters or the imagined Turks in the corner booth?”
My pulse kicked against my ribs. “Then we decide what’s real.”
She held my stare for a long beat, then leaned back, picking up her fork again. A new, more subtle performance began, one just for me. She took a delicate bite, her lips closing around the tines, her eyes never leaving mine. She chewed slowly, swallowed. “Okay,” she said, her voice a low promise. “We’ll decide.”
The rest of the meal passed in a haze of easy conversation and lingering touches. We paid the bill with a stack of crisp notes. I helped her with her chair, my hand resting on the bare skin of her back where the dress dipped. She shivered, and it wasn’t for show.
Outside, the evening air was cool.
Outside, the evening air was cool, carrying the distant scent of roasted nuts from a street vendor. Tifa hugged her arms, the thin straps of her dress offering no real warmth. I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over her shoulders without a word.
The heavy fabric swallowed her, the collar smelling faintly of gun oil and the citrus soap from the Starlight Inn. She pulled it tighter, her fingers brushing mine. “Thanks.”
We walked in silence for a block, the clicks of her new heels a sharp counterpoint to the dull thud of my boots. The performance was over for now. It was just two people walking through a clean, quiet street under a sky cluttered with stars you could never see from the slums.
“I’ve got a hotel room tonight,” I said, my voice casual. “Topside. Nice place. Big windows, a minibar that isn’t bolted down.” I glanced at her. “I’d love it if you joined me for a nightcap. But it’s your call.”
Her step hitched, just slightly. She didn’t stop walking, but her gaze fixed on the glow of a neon sign ahead. Conflict tightened the line of her jaw. I could see the calculation warring with something else in the set of her shoulders. Was this another transaction, the next logical step in a paid arrangement? Or was it the pull she’d felt in the grimy shower, the one that had nothing to do with Gil?
I didn’t push. I let the silence stretch, filled only by our footsteps and the hum of the city.
“I’m excited to see you in that new place,” I said, changing tack. “When you get it set up. Make it yours.” I slowed, turning to face her beside a darkened storefront window. “I wasn’t sure how much stuff you had in that dingy room above Seventh Heaven.”
A wry smile touched her lips. “A bed. A dresser. Some knuckle wraps. Not exactly a lot to move.”
I reached into my inner pocket. The leather of my wallet was smooth and worn. I pulled out the card, black and matte, heavy in my hand. The embossed gold lettering caught the streetlight as I held it out to her. “Then buy whatever you need. Clothes that make you feel like the woman who owns that view. Furniture. Sheets. Whatever.”
She stared at the card, not taking it. Her amber eyes flicked from the plastic to my face, searching. “Ron…”
“It’s for the cover,” I said, my voice low. “Everything needs to be consistent. A merc with my supposed earnings wouldn’t stash his girlfriend in an empty box. She’d have things. Nice things.”
“Is that what this is?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “A girlfriend stipend?”
I nudged the card closer until it touched her fingers, still tucked under the lapel of my jacket. “It’s a tool. Just like the dress. Just like the story we told Marla. Use it.”
Her breath misted in the cool air. Finally, her fingers uncurled. She took the card, her touch hesitant. She held it as if judging its weight, her thumb rubbing over the raised numbers. The symbol of the transaction was physically heavier than the cash she was used to.
She looked from the card to me, her conflict laid bare in the tension around her eyes, in the slight tremble of her lower lip. Then she slipped it into the small clutch she carried, the movement decisive. She let out a long, slow breath, the steam swirling.
“Just a nightcap?” she asked, her gaze finally meeting mine directly.
“That’s all it has to be,” I said.
She nodded once, a sharp little dip of her chin. She stepped closer, closing the distance between us on the empty sidewalk. Her hand found the front of my shirt, her fingers fisting in the material. She pulled me down, and her kiss wasn’t soft or performative. It was hungry, a claiming. It tasted of expensive white wine and a decision made.
When she broke away, her eyes were dark. “Okay,” she breathed, the word warm against my mouth. “Let’s see this hotel room.”