It's been a few months since Tifa arrived in Fortuna, and she still isn't used to the breath-taking majesty of its buildings, which make even the tallest Shinra reactors look unimpressive. Once, she stood in Junon, marvelling at the Sister Ray, and wondered if she'd ever see anything that made her feel so earth-shatteringly small again. But here, on foreign soil, beneath endless concrete, with towers sprawling toward the heavens, she feels incredibly insignificant and so far from home.
The past few months of being here have been a culture shock to say the very least. Being visibly different and not speaking the local tongue was initially a bit of a hurdle, which gradually gave way to greater concerns of devilry and talk of other realms beyond her understanding. Being different in Fortuna, she quickly realised, is not a good thing. She hadn't even settled into life in the city before being cornered by a swordsman, forced to justify why she was not a 'red-eyed witch' and why this young swordsman shouldn't gut her like the demon filth she was— talking done entirely with her fists, naturally. Demon hunting, she very quickly realised, is quite a lucrative profession in these parts and in rather high demand.
This evening, she's fresh from the hunt, demon blood clinging to her boots as she makes her way through dimly lit streets of concrete. Her traitorous brain has decided it knows exactly where she's going this evening before she's consciously made the decision herself. Her plans are solidified when she hands over cash for two pizzas, stopping along the way to buy a couple of beers. It's both an apology for stealing work, bribery for some company, and to curb the homesickness that’s been festering in her belly all day. She knows very few people in this city, and it's only natural she ends up at the only place she has to go.
They are barely friends, they probably aren’t friends at all. Colleagues, acquaintances, perhaps, but that’s close enough. The door to the office gives way with worrying ease, but only a fool would think they could sneak up on this man and live to tell the tale. She isn’t sure if it’s possible to announce her presence over the sound of the jukebox in the corner. She isn’t even sure if she needs to; his alarmingly sharp inhuman senses may know there’s someone here already.
“Is this supposed to be music?” She asks, yelling over the sound of guitar riffs that gradually get louder the further her feet take her. “Do all people here have such awful taste?” She groans, pizza boxes hitting his desk with a thud.
There was the scent of greasy cheese and dough, sweat, blood, a familiar sting of magic and scented lotion. Magicians might have flung around performative claims that they could count the time between footsteps and the sounds some boots made but there was only one person he knew that kept that particular profile. Turning to put his feet back on the ground, he'd lean forward to prop an elbow on the desk for when she stepped through the door, offering her a smile without any real meaning. It was an affectation offered so he wouldn't put a well-meaning girl ill at ease though from time to time he'd wondered if it had the right effect. Maybe it was deserved for as intense as his first-time meetings could be. Finding out his contract was dead wrong and that he'd been chasing down someone altogether innocent? It put a sour taste in his mouth just before she swapped it for the taste of blood.
At first, as she crossed the threshold and made her way to his desk, he'd touched his fingers to a coin at the edge of his desk and began rolling it between them. With a gentle flick of his thumb, he spun it towards the jukebox, catching the corner of a button and lowering the volume by a few measures. When it seemed more tolerable for consumption, Dante leaned back to sit in his seat and look Tifa's way with a bare hint of curiosity. There was something hidden away behind his eyes, not at all disturbed by her sudden entrance but plentifully welcoming for a man whose home was just barged into.
"They're classics," It wasn't a complete lie. The smile he had on might have been mean-spirited but there was sincerity in the way he spoke, almost as if he found a way to miss old faces he'd only met once in the past. "You could say there's a lot of demons that possess tokens of obsession. Might be why we get so many haunted books and paintings from failed artists. These days? I get a whole lotta records. Failed bands are a dime a dozen but sometimes? You luck out and find a prodigy wasted by circumstance."
It wasn't that he hadn't known gentler ways to tease but he found she could handle the sort of reverence that would make just about anyone's skin crawl from just how coolly it slipped free of him. That was the sort of thing he could only say to a colleague who understood what it was like to experience the worst day of someone's life on a weekly basis and his eyes were alight just to recall the last time he felt it. That was more than enough reason to keep his distance. Tifa was sweet, troubled by plenty of other monsters whose names he wasn't privy to and she didn't need anymore added to the list she kept to herself. It was already enough that she had to clean his drool off her bar even a few times.
"Course, I doubt you're here to chat about a bunch of failed musicians who couldn't pay their tabs in cash and I could've sworn I paid my tab before I left, so..." He elaborated with a lazy little spin of a finger, drawing question mark in the air. "What's the special occasion?"
When he whirls around in his chair, lured by the scent of cheese and dough, a lazy, expectant smile appears on his face. He regards her much too coolly, betraying not a sliver of surprise as he sets his elbows on the desk, leaning in to stare her down. It's almost as if he knew who it was before she announced herself, something that neither disturbs nor surprises her as much as it should. She has seen him in action many times, anticipating the enemy's moves even before they've fully decided on their course of action. He’s always one step ahead.
The way he moves is completely unnatural, his movements far too quick and precise for her human brain to fully comprehend. She barely manages a shocked inhale, her eyes trailing the coin thrown from his desk towards the jukebox before the volume becomes tolerable. When her eyes find him once more, he's relaxing back into his seat, and she can hardly contain the scoff that crosses her soft features. His flair for the dramatic is as impressive as it is infuriating. "Show off," she mutters, crossing the small distance that remains between them to rid her hands of her peace offering. The pizza box and beers drop to his desk with a thud, landing on top of a stack of bills, which she kindly chooses not to mention, before she falters back into the chair opposite his desk. It's been a rough day, and it's very telling.
Dante holds himself much too confidently, exudes cockiness from every pore, and he knows exactly the effect he has on people. Everything he says is calculated, every pointed look, every lazy movement intends to gain a reaction. He's an apex predator, and she should feel like the prey, but he doesn't get under her skin quite the way he should, nor perhaps the way he wishes he could. Instead, she watches him, arms calmly folded before her chest until he finishes. “Charming, as always, Dante.” She lets out an exasperated laugh, eyes crinkled in amusement as a smile tugs at the corners of her lips.
"I was in the neighbourhood," she adds with a flippant wave of her hand, an action that urges him not to press on the matter. She quickly lifts the pizza box lid, helps herself to a slice, and leans back into the comfort of the chair. It creaks beneath her every movement, old and worn, and she idly wonders when he last renovated. Morrison had anticipated he would be wallowing in light of his job privileges being revoked, unaccustomed to life without the ability to carve demons apart, and it seems his hunch was correct. Sometimes Tifa wonders who exactly Dante is outside of combat and what his life looks like. Looking around his office, containing the bare essentials for survival, there’s very little semblance of one. It makes him as pitiful as it does relatable.
"What?” She arches a brow in his direction, “Can't a girl eat pizza with a colleague without having an ulterior motive?" She hums, not waiting for his response before guiding a slice between her lips to chew innocently. “I’m sure you had a super exciting evening planned before I showed up.”
He'd yet to take a slice or even glance at the boxes she'd set down. It wasn't an unwelcome feeling, seeing Tifa on a slow night. There were less pleasant leeches that might have come by to brag if they hadn't been made well aware that he was temperamental and petty even on a good day and especially not when he was out of work. If anything, she was an outstanding member of the community, turning a dingy little corner of the neighbors' hell into a pleasant spot to take a load off. On top of all the 'community service' hours she took, Tifa was sure to make everyone's list as a favorite darling in no time at all, though Dante knew better than to let himself be a part of the fold. He'd leaned one way to pull open a desk drawer, finding both a rocks glass and a fresh bottle of cheap whiskey. The minute climbed to the top with the long hand, poised to plummet as some poignant metaphor for how he'd envisioned his evening going.
"Aren't you always?" A pleasant drawl rolled right off his tongue, finding it a little too easy to enjoy her pace. Seeing her with others, listening to conversations when he'd pretended to be be busy cleaning up in pool, he'd found it easy to believe that smile she had on was the genuine article. The way a smile cut into her cheeks, it was like was made to enjoy life. Even if he'd kept it hidden beneath a mean little chuckle, he wasn't willing to give her any reasons to act otherwise. With a little 'clink', he'd touched the mouth of the bottle to the lip of the glass and poured generously. "I'd ask myself why you weren't chomping at the bit to steal work out from under me if I hadn't known you were too sweet for that sort of trickery."
Tifa was one of the many poor souls he'd had the misfortune of meeting that reminded him of just how little he appreciated being given bad recon on his work. Morrison never steered him wrong but he hadn't always handed the hunter's card to the right folks. The first time he'd laid eyes on her, it had been at the end of his barrel. Dirty work. Bad intel. He was quick but, in the chaos of that moment, she'd decked him and he'd been reunited with the old, familiar grating and throb of a dislocated jaw. At the time, she'd been relieved when he believed her and so had he. She ran. He stayed. He felt ruined.
By the time he'd found his ill-informed client, the louse was tumbling out of a bar, stumbling drunk and bragging about landing a reliable hunter to do his dirty work for him cheap. Dante couldn't remember feeling good or satisfied in feeding the pompous fellow his teeth but he felt in his soul it was better than leaving him to rot in an alley. That night, he'd drunk himself into oblivion and woken up to go right back to it all the next morning for that self-flagellating habit he could never kick. She'd even thanked him and he'd wished she would have hit him again.
The heady aroma of strong, cheap liquor burned its way through his nostrils as he'd stood up and taken a drink. Glass poised just beneath his lip, Dante gave pause before glancing her way once more with the air of a man prepared to starve for the sake of a particularly uncharacteristic question, "So...Life in the city treating you well, Slugger?"
She watches in amusement as he withdraws from his elbows, averting his icy blue gaze from her just long enough to dip into his desk drawer and retrieve a bottle of whisky. She fights the urge to make a quip about its quality and the beer she spent her hard-earned cash on. Of course, he has an alcohol supply tucked away in here; that doesn’t surprise her at all, but it doesn’t stop her from quirking a brow at the generous measurement he pours himself in the seconds that follow. Her lips curve into a smile, equal parts amused and concerned, like she doesn’t regularly pour him enough alcohol to sedate a horse or kill a man. As if he doesn’t regularly swing by her rundown little business between jobs, claiming the pool table and a bottle of her best mid-tier whisky. She’s much too prideful to admit it, but his presence on the slightly rowdier evenings brings her a great deal of comfort.
The saccharine smile on her lips stretches wider in response to the sound of his voice. Her small frame relaxes back into the seat, regarding him in amusement as she nibbles at her slice. “You think I’m sweet, huh?” Her head quirks a little to the left, voice and eyes full of mirth. She’s teasing him, that much is apparent, only because she knows he can hold his own and give just as good back. This is just how they are; they poke and prod at each other, a little distant and a little guarded, but eager to gain a reaction. There’s been some kind of imaginary wedge between them since that evening Dante cornered her in the alleyway, sword raised, eyes wild, every bit the infamous demon hunter she’d come to learn about. She still remembers the way those wild eyes softened in horror at the terror reflected in her own, with the realisation she wasn’t the creature he had expected. His face bore more expression that evening than she’s seen on him since. She’d later learn he made quick work of the man who ordered her attack, and she made sure to thank him, but that evening in the alleyway continues to ensure they keep each other at arm's length— is it him, is it her, she isn’t sure.
“Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think you do,” she chimes, punctuated by another bite of her pizza and a quirk of her brow, and perhaps there’s a sliver of seriousness there, “maybe this has been my plan all along.” All the while, her eyes trail him, watching the way he rises from his seat and takes an idle sip from his glass. Her eyes, large and bright, betray her entirely. Tifa, for all her faults, is kind and sweet; she wears her heart on her sleeve and her softness on her face. She’s good-natured, much too good for a city like the one she’s found herself in, Morrison often comments. To which she usually offers tight-lipped smiles and girlish laughs, because she can’t bring herself to tell them of the horrors of Nibelheim, Midgard, and the demons she’s running from.
His next question is so raw and genuine that it catches her off guard, because their conversations rarely move beyond the realm of pleasantries and playful teasing. She’s torn between being truthful and being guarded, but opts for the latter, lest she bare her soul to him. If she answered truthfully, she’d say life is incredibly difficult in a city that’s so foreign to her, that the loneliness eats away at her sometimes until there’s nothing left. Instead, she cocks her head and smiles, pretty and performative. “I suppose business at the bar could be a little better, but I make enough to keep the lights on. Having a side gig helps, I can’t really complain,” she shrugs, hesitantly followed by, “and how’s things been on your end?” It feels silly and unnatural to ask a man as well-guarded as Dante, a man she realises she knows next to nothing about, how he’s been recently.
Lingering by the end of the pool table, he'd set his glass down on the border. Tifa looked comfy, almost as if she weren't in the epicenter of at least twenty-percent of that poor city's demon attacks. She'd been dangerous in a number of ways, hadn't she? Friendly looks like that had to be practiced and with all the banter she endured and returned in a day, he had to think she was a master. Whoever taught Tifa to smile must have been a marketing genius.
"Now, you're sounding scary," For the most part, he was smiling easily enough, knowing he hadn't any choice. She was kicking her feet, humming and being bright-eyed and shining up his cell. Almost briefly, his eyes drifted beside her to a darker part of the window, still as a painting. His own reflection. He didn't even look tired.
"Busy as you are, there's no way you had any time to hatch a plan. Almost makes me wonder if you ought to start callin' on more tabs," Dante replied almost cheerily without missing a beat. He understood the irony in that sort of advice for the number of times he'd drifted to sleep on her bar. Self-aggrandizing jokes came easier with drinks. "But hey, anyway. I'm curious."
His thoughts drifted, too easily lost when he was in the middle of his act.
Swinging a sword, over and over and testing the limits of his body, that boy could never tire. Since he was little, it felt like he had a bottomless well of energy and strength, things that couldn't ever be satisfied by sitting still. No matter what he did then, it wasn't enough to have fun by itself. He had to prove he was bigger and faster and better with a sword. As fate was kind, he was given a brother who could see everything like he did. That boy believed that the only other person in the world who knew him for who he was must have been the only one he wanted to measure up to. They could prove who was stronger and gloat and have fun. Like devils. It was their nature.
Fate was cruel for making him look his dead brother and his killer in the eyes every time he looked in a mirror. For that moment in the window, he'd held his own gaze with a blank contempt and condemnation, finding every reason to hate what he'd seen. Even so, it was only an instant. In only a moment's concentration, he'd managed to set it aside. Better to reflect on the sunshine poking through the mirror instead.
"So," Dante's lips created into a grin once again with practiced ease, "What made you go with demon hunting? There's gotta be other things that crossed your mind, right?"
Her small frame melts back into the seat behind her, large red eyes trailing him as his strong form stalks around the pool table to linger by the edge. A glass perched on its end, he bites back, all teasing words and a wolfish grin. It's a practiced smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, the kind that makes her want to push and get under his skin to find out who he is beneath all that performance and bravado. Sometimes, it's difficult to tell whether Dante is authentically himself or a carefully curated persona intended to keep people at arm's length. It's difficult to tell if he's the cheerful, easy-going lone wolf he wants people to think he is or if it's all an illusion to protect the fortress he's built around himself from a lifetime of hurt and torment. Sometimes, just sometimes, there's the barest hint of a faraway look, and the mask slips for a fragment of a second, making her wonder if he might be as broken as she is.
When the teasing smile leaves his lips and the light fades from his eyes, gaze trailing to the far side of the room, she thinks she might be right. It has gone just as quickly as it came, so fast that if she blinked, she would miss it, replaced once more by another performative, guarded smile. There is nothing in her voice or expression to show she has ever seen anything; instead, she just blinks at him. "Scary? But I'm sweet, said so yourself," she quips playfully, matter-of-factly, the teasing lilt of her voice taking on a sing-song quality intended to pull a scoff from him, punctuated by a coy look and a savouring swig of her beer. "I'm a woman, if there's one thing we're great at, it's multitasking." Manoeuvring the bottle to her lap, eyes burning with mirth, her head tilts a little to the left as she surveys him. "I can hunt demons, pour drinks, and have evil plans hatched before lunch, but if this is you offering to settle up your tab, I wouldn't say no." Her eyes are warm, her tone playful as she crosses one leg over the other.
His next question makes her pause, lips pursed thoughtfully, both sets of fingers coiling around the bottle in her hold as she ponders her response. It was simple, really; she can hold her own, and she's good with her fists. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of demon-hunting opportunities in these parts, it only seemed natural to put her skill set to good use. This isn't Tifa's first rodeo with monsters; she's fought them her whole life, and she's pretty damn good at it. Instead of telling Dante about how she watched her hometown burn to the ground and how she's fought her whole life to make those responsible atone, instead of sharing her experiences with Avalanche and the desire to be strong enough to protect in the aftermath of tremendous loss, she smiles. The same guarded, performative smile that had graced Dante's lips just moments before, the kind that refuses to give too much away when she's falling apart at the seams. "Oh, you know. Needed a hobby, and knitting was taken," she shrugs flippantly, the tension evaporating from her body in the seconds that follow until the smile becomes lighter. Until it’s genuine, warm, and soft, until she looks more like herself.
Then she's leaning forward until her elbows hit her thighs, to blink across the room at him. "Why? Worried the competition's getting too good?" she breathes, the teasing cadence of her voice accompanied by a raised brow.
There was the scent of spring air mixed with the acrid bite of oil and gas. He could smell rain from miles away, turning from the window once he found there was nothing outside that was going to interest him. He'd always hoped to smell blood and sulfur on the air to at least hint that there was something mean lurking, hunting and making avail for his sake to better his evening. It soured things further, assuring him that there would be no bombastic end to his evening and not a single spirited battle that hoped to test him.
He'd begun to wonder, turning to glance the way of the coat he'd set aside, a silent sigh lightening his shoulders when he went to pass Tifa and reach into one of the pockets. He'd found his keys, half turning to lean over her and drop them with a clatter on top of his desk. Even when she was sharp and merciless, she still seemed sweet to him. There couldn't have been anything good about what dragged her into his neck of the woods but she was fighting it admirably well. One by one, he unclipped the bindings that held his vest on, hanging it over his coat as if he'd settled on calling it quits for the night. Once it was off, he was left with a skin-tight undershirt with a handful of crescent gouges that exposed skin in places that would have been particularly career-ending to be run through with foot-long claws. A tiny slip more humble than before, he offered Tifa a dry, witty insight for her eager advertisement, "Masking the bitters with something sweet's a bartender's specialty. Maybe I ought to run that tab out longer the next time around?"
Finally, he'd tugged up the cover of one box, lifting up a slice to take a bite with a low hum of satisfaction. Salty, sweet and too good to be healthy, he'd sighed and listened--seating himself on the corner of his desk with his back to her. Each one of the open cuts in his shirt had a matching partner in the back. The off-rhythmic thumping of heavy rain fell on the roof over their heads suddenly, accompanied by a damning peal of thunder.
"It just makes me wonder," Since he was a child, he'd been playing that game. Picking locks and hot-wiring cars while boys and girls his age were adding up letters with their numbers and riding bikes in their neighborhoods, he found himself thinking of so many 'what-ifs' that he'd never experience for himself. How much had Tifa managed to experience? Prying wasn't his business but curiosity won over every time. "You're not in it for the love of it like I am and you've got the skills to run this neighborhood all on your own. Wouldn't even need to get your hands dirty."
As if he needed to emphasize it, he'd popped his thumb in his mouth to do away with a little fleck of sauce, "Just color me curious."
She watches with rapt attention as he finally turns from the window, the tension evaporating from his shoulders with a resigned sigh that makes the corners of her lips twitch. It's very much the sight of a man coming to terms with the fact that he won't be fighting any demons tonight. It's just him, her, a few pizza boxes, and some stiff drinks until the rain subsides enough for her to attempt the trip home.
In a few quick strides, his towering frame looms over the back of her chair. The sound of rustling fabric and the intense heat emanating from his body indicate that he's lingering there. Then she tilts her head, a curious look cast over her right shoulder just in time to see him tug the bindings from his chest. Her gaze immediately falters to his shirt, where it lingers as he moves around to perch himself on the edge of his desk.
Her perfectly arched brows knitted together, her grip tightening around the glass bottle nestled between her fingers as her gaze remained fixed on the torn fabric. The dim lighting of the room illuminated the edges of the jagged, symmetrical gashes in his vest on either side of his body. The remnants of large, sharp claws, from something that had got a little too close for comfort. She imagined torn flesh once lay beneath his ruined shirt, quickly rectified by his unnatural healing abilities. She had known many men who treated their survival as an afterthought, but Dante was something else entirely. Dante didn't just flirt with death; he mocked it, grinning in its face with a hollow recklessness that worried her.
She wants to chastise him, but she lifts her beer bottle to her lips instead, taking a greedy gulp to swallow down any words she doesn't have the right to say. Her gaze dropping from his bare flesh to her bare thighs instead. It's the sound of his voice that pulls it upwards once more, crimson irises lingering on the back of his silver head. He’s curious, subtly asking for more. It is curious, after all, that this red eyed woman from the far side of the planet shows up one day, much too handy with her fists and much too eager to help. Her lips part, opening and closing a few times before she makes any audible sound.
Images of Nibelheim burning, her father, Aerith, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and the iron sky falling on top of the Sector 7 slums flicker in her mind until her stomach knots.
"There are a lot of terrible things back home," she starts, voice small, taking a few moments to collect herself before continuing with a little more clarity, "not all monsters have claws and sharp teeth." It's perhaps the first brutally honest thing she's said to him in all the months she's known him. It alarms her, being this open and honest with another person, let alone one she barely knows anything about. It terrifies her to admit things that might be held against her, that might be perceived as weakness, but she continues all the same. "I've been fighting monsters my whole life, and I'm pretty good at it," she breathes, fingers loosening on the bottle grasped between her gloved fingers. "I've watched too many innocent people die to sit around and do nothing."
Her mind is reeling when the last syllable leaves her lips, worried she's said too much, that she's made things wildly uncomfortable between them. She's almost glad he's facing in the other direction, so that she can't see the reaction on his face. "You do this because you love it?" Quickly tumbles from her lips, attempting to deflect the conversation away from herself. Do you do this because you love it, or is it because you've also lost too much and it dulls the ache inside you for a brief few moments, she wonders. Is it because you also feel the need to protect those who can’t protect themselves? "I doubt anyone wakes up one day and decides they're going to be a demon hunter," she says, punctuated by a disbelieving laugh.
What made Tifa admirable hadn't been her counts or her kills. There was something genuinely terrifying about someone half his size going into the same career and claiming a seat in his shop with the poise and courtesy of a girl at Sunday school. He could even see some of it in the dull obsidian reflection in his mirror. There was a certain stillness that made her seem even more modest than she'd tried to present herself but coating every word that she'd offered had been another layer he found dimly familiar. It often felt like she'd memorized the names of pets and kids, having bright-eyed enthusiasm for a chance to say something she'd been thinking of all day. It made it transparent when she was worried and who it was about.
It stung a little, putting her at distance, but it would hurt all the same with everyone else who tried to reach out and tug at the threads woven into his disguise. He finished his drink with a tip back and thought about what agony she must have felt to survive Sector 7 and to know there were people left behind, trapped, dead or buried so deep that no one could confirm which was which. Dante leaned onto one hand, his shoulder tilting down and dipping so he could meet her eyes straight. The scraps of a smile he'd kept on hand, just in case, were washed away in thought. Each part of herself she'd offered had become more real to him with each word and, without a shred of a doubt in mind, he understood precisely how much he wanted her to leave. Good people weren't supposed to find their perch in his shop.
He touched his glass to the neck of her bottle, dreadfully sly in his silence offer of a toast. He'd wanted her to follow his eyes as he'd offered her genuine praise but, as the words failed to inch their way out, he found what had caught them and kept them from escaping. It wasn't her fault that she'd been curious. Tifa's eyes, wide with the hope that she could make sense of a mystery and understand him, caught him and wrestled at his heart. His instincts, manufactured to protect everyone but himself, urged him to put an end to it. That she'd be kind despite the pain and effort of it made her more human than anyone else and it left lances through his heart. He hung over her, his eyes flashing grey beneath the halo of his hair held just over her, "Y'know, we can't all be heroes like you."
He smiled, sickeningly arrogant--or at least that's the way he wanted to seem. Dante was coarse, well aware of what it felt like to be beside him and to exchange words as if the greatest burden he'd undertaken was to think and speak with the veiled presence of a monster lingering beside, "To answer your question?"
"It's because I'm bored," As far as he'd been concerned, it was the least humanizing answer he could produce. A profession that brought misery and death to everyone who'd been involved and he'd just wanted to kill the time? There was no coming back from cruelty put to such a crude shape.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: It's been a while.
Date: 2025-04-07 09:58 pm (UTC)The past few months of being here have been a culture shock to say the very least. Being visibly different and not speaking the local tongue was initially a bit of a hurdle, which gradually gave way to greater concerns of devilry and talk of other realms beyond her understanding. Being different in Fortuna, she quickly realised, is not a good thing. She hadn't even settled into life in the city before being cornered by a swordsman, forced to justify why she was not a 'red-eyed witch' and why this young swordsman shouldn't gut her like the demon filth she was— talking done entirely with her fists, naturally. Demon hunting, she very quickly realised, is quite a lucrative profession in these parts and in rather high demand.
This evening, she's fresh from the hunt, demon blood clinging to her boots as she makes her way through dimly lit streets of concrete. Her traitorous brain has decided it knows exactly where she's going this evening before she's consciously made the decision herself. Her plans are solidified when she hands over cash for two pizzas, stopping along the way to buy a couple of beers. It's both an apology for stealing work, bribery for some company, and to curb the homesickness that’s been festering in her belly all day. She knows very few people in this city, and it's only natural she ends up at the only place she has to go.
They are barely friends, they probably aren’t friends at all. Colleagues, acquaintances, perhaps, but that’s close enough. The door to the office gives way with worrying ease, but only a fool would think they could sneak up on this man and live to tell the tale. She isn’t sure if it’s possible to announce her presence over the sound of the jukebox in the corner. She isn’t even sure if she needs to; his alarmingly sharp inhuman senses may know there’s someone here already.
“Is this supposed to be music?” She asks, yelling over the sound of guitar riffs that gradually get louder the further her feet take her. “Do all people here have such awful taste?” She groans, pizza boxes hitting his desk with a thud.
Forgot to say the shop would be outside of the city because he prefers dingy, out-of-the-way spots.
Date: 2025-04-08 12:04 am (UTC)At first, as she crossed the threshold and made her way to his desk, he'd touched his fingers to a coin at the edge of his desk and began rolling it between them. With a gentle flick of his thumb, he spun it towards the jukebox, catching the corner of a button and lowering the volume by a few measures. When it seemed more tolerable for consumption, Dante leaned back to sit in his seat and look Tifa's way with a bare hint of curiosity. There was something hidden away behind his eyes, not at all disturbed by her sudden entrance but plentifully welcoming for a man whose home was just barged into.
"They're classics," It wasn't a complete lie. The smile he had on might have been mean-spirited but there was sincerity in the way he spoke, almost as if he found a way to miss old faces he'd only met once in the past. "You could say there's a lot of demons that possess tokens of obsession. Might be why we get so many haunted books and paintings from failed artists. These days? I get a whole lotta records. Failed bands are a dime a dozen but sometimes? You luck out and find a prodigy wasted by circumstance."
It wasn't that he hadn't known gentler ways to tease but he found she could handle the sort of reverence that would make just about anyone's skin crawl from just how coolly it slipped free of him. That was the sort of thing he could only say to a colleague who understood what it was like to experience the worst day of someone's life on a weekly basis and his eyes were alight just to recall the last time he felt it. That was more than enough reason to keep his distance. Tifa was sweet, troubled by plenty of other monsters whose names he wasn't privy to and she didn't need anymore added to the list she kept to herself. It was already enough that she had to clean his drool off her bar even a few times.
"Course, I doubt you're here to chat about a bunch of failed musicians who couldn't pay their tabs in cash and I could've sworn I paid my tab before I left, so..." He elaborated with a lazy little spin of a finger, drawing question mark in the air. "What's the special occasion?"
I didn't even consider location rip, that makes more sense!
Date: 2025-04-10 11:35 pm (UTC)The way he moves is completely unnatural, his movements far too quick and precise for her human brain to fully comprehend. She barely manages a shocked inhale, her eyes trailing the coin thrown from his desk towards the jukebox before the volume becomes tolerable. When her eyes find him once more, he's relaxing back into his seat, and she can hardly contain the scoff that crosses her soft features. His flair for the dramatic is as impressive as it is infuriating. "Show off," she mutters, crossing the small distance that remains between them to rid her hands of her peace offering. The pizza box and beers drop to his desk with a thud, landing on top of a stack of bills, which she kindly chooses not to mention, before she falters back into the chair opposite his desk. It's been a rough day, and it's very telling.
Dante holds himself much too confidently, exudes cockiness from every pore, and he knows exactly the effect he has on people. Everything he says is calculated, every pointed look, every lazy movement intends to gain a reaction. He's an apex predator, and she should feel like the prey, but he doesn't get under her skin quite the way he should, nor perhaps the way he wishes he could. Instead, she watches him, arms calmly folded before her chest until he finishes. “Charming, as always, Dante.” She lets out an exasperated laugh, eyes crinkled in amusement as a smile tugs at the corners of her lips.
"I was in the neighbourhood," she adds with a flippant wave of her hand, an action that urges him not to press on the matter. She quickly lifts the pizza box lid, helps herself to a slice, and leans back into the comfort of the chair. It creaks beneath her every movement, old and worn, and she idly wonders when he last renovated. Morrison had anticipated he would be wallowing in light of his job privileges being revoked, unaccustomed to life without the ability to carve demons apart, and it seems his hunch was correct. Sometimes Tifa wonders who exactly Dante is outside of combat and what his life looks like. Looking around his office, containing the bare essentials for survival, there’s very little semblance of one. It makes him as pitiful as it does relatable.
"What?” She arches a brow in his direction, “Can't a girl eat pizza with a colleague without having an ulterior motive?" She hums, not waiting for his response before guiding a slice between her lips to chew innocently. “I’m sure you had a super exciting evening planned before I showed up.”
Since that shop is getting destroyed every 2-3 months at least
Date: 2025-04-11 03:46 am (UTC)"Aren't you always?" A pleasant drawl rolled right off his tongue, finding it a little too easy to enjoy her pace. Seeing her with others, listening to conversations when he'd pretended to be be busy cleaning up in pool, he'd found it easy to believe that smile she had on was the genuine article. The way a smile cut into her cheeks, it was like was made to enjoy life. Even if he'd kept it hidden beneath a mean little chuckle, he wasn't willing to give her any reasons to act otherwise. With a little 'clink', he'd touched the mouth of the bottle to the lip of the glass and poured generously. "I'd ask myself why you weren't chomping at the bit to steal work out from under me if I hadn't known you were too sweet for that sort of trickery."
Tifa was one of the many poor souls he'd had the misfortune of meeting that reminded him of just how little he appreciated being given bad recon on his work. Morrison never steered him wrong but he hadn't always handed the hunter's card to the right folks. The first time he'd laid eyes on her, it had been at the end of his barrel. Dirty work. Bad intel. He was quick but, in the chaos of that moment, she'd decked him and he'd been reunited with the old, familiar grating and throb of a dislocated jaw. At the time, she'd been relieved when he believed her and so had he. She ran. He stayed. He felt ruined.
By the time he'd found his ill-informed client, the louse was tumbling out of a bar, stumbling drunk and bragging about landing a reliable hunter to do his dirty work for him cheap. Dante couldn't remember feeling good or satisfied in feeding the pompous fellow his teeth but he felt in his soul it was better than leaving him to rot in an alley. That night, he'd drunk himself into oblivion and woken up to go right back to it all the next morning for that self-flagellating habit he could never kick. She'd even thanked him and he'd wished she would have hit him again.
The heady aroma of strong, cheap liquor burned its way through his nostrils as he'd stood up and taken a drink. Glass poised just beneath his lip, Dante gave pause before glancing her way once more with the air of a man prepared to starve for the sake of a particularly uncharacteristic question, "So...Life in the city treating you well, Slugger?"
Re: Since that shop is getting destroyed every 2-3 months at least
Date: 2025-04-16 11:49 pm (UTC)The saccharine smile on her lips stretches wider in response to the sound of his voice. Her small frame relaxes back into the seat, regarding him in amusement as she nibbles at her slice. “You think I’m sweet, huh?” Her head quirks a little to the left, voice and eyes full of mirth. She’s teasing him, that much is apparent, only because she knows he can hold his own and give just as good back. This is just how they are; they poke and prod at each other, a little distant and a little guarded, but eager to gain a reaction. There’s been some kind of imaginary wedge between them since that evening Dante cornered her in the alleyway, sword raised, eyes wild, every bit the infamous demon hunter she’d come to learn about. She still remembers the way those wild eyes softened in horror at the terror reflected in her own, with the realisation she wasn’t the creature he had expected. His face bore more expression that evening than she’s seen on him since. She’d later learn he made quick work of the man who ordered her attack, and she made sure to thank him, but that evening in the alleyway continues to ensure they keep each other at arm's length— is it him, is it her, she isn’t sure.
“Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think you do,” she chimes, punctuated by another bite of her pizza and a quirk of her brow, and perhaps there’s a sliver of seriousness there, “maybe this has been my plan all along.” All the while, her eyes trail him, watching the way he rises from his seat and takes an idle sip from his glass. Her eyes, large and bright, betray her entirely. Tifa, for all her faults, is kind and sweet; she wears her heart on her sleeve and her softness on her face. She’s good-natured, much too good for a city like the one she’s found herself in, Morrison often comments. To which she usually offers tight-lipped smiles and girlish laughs, because she can’t bring herself to tell them of the horrors of Nibelheim, Midgard, and the demons she’s running from.
His next question is so raw and genuine that it catches her off guard, because their conversations rarely move beyond the realm of pleasantries and playful teasing. She’s torn between being truthful and being guarded, but opts for the latter, lest she bare her soul to him. If she answered truthfully, she’d say life is incredibly difficult in a city that’s so foreign to her, that the loneliness eats away at her sometimes until there’s nothing left. Instead, she cocks her head and smiles, pretty and performative. “I suppose business at the bar could be a little better, but I make enough to keep the lights on. Having a side gig helps, I can’t really complain,” she shrugs, hesitantly followed by, “and how’s things been on your end?” It feels silly and unnatural to ask a man as well-guarded as Dante, a man she realises she knows next to nothing about, how he’s been recently.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 03:29 am (UTC)"Now, you're sounding scary," For the most part, he was smiling easily enough, knowing he hadn't any choice. She was kicking her feet, humming and being bright-eyed and shining up his cell. Almost briefly, his eyes drifted beside her to a darker part of the window, still as a painting. His own reflection. He didn't even look tired.
"Busy as you are, there's no way you had any time to hatch a plan. Almost makes me wonder if you ought to start callin' on more tabs," Dante replied almost cheerily without missing a beat. He understood the irony in that sort of advice for the number of times he'd drifted to sleep on her bar. Self-aggrandizing jokes came easier with drinks. "But hey, anyway. I'm curious."
His thoughts drifted, too easily lost when he was in the middle of his act.
Swinging a sword, over and over and testing the limits of his body, that boy could never tire. Since he was little, it felt like he had a bottomless well of energy and strength, things that couldn't ever be satisfied by sitting still. No matter what he did then, it wasn't enough to have fun by itself. He had to prove he was bigger and faster and better with a sword. As fate was kind, he was given a brother who could see everything like he did. That boy believed that the only other person in the world who knew him for who he was must have been the only one he wanted to measure up to. They could prove who was stronger and gloat and have fun. Like devils. It was their nature.
Fate was cruel for making him look his dead brother and his killer in the eyes every time he looked in a mirror. For that moment in the window, he'd held his own gaze with a blank contempt and condemnation, finding every reason to hate what he'd seen. Even so, it was only an instant. In only a moment's concentration, he'd managed to set it aside. Better to reflect on the sunshine poking through the mirror instead.
"So," Dante's lips created into a grin once again with practiced ease, "What made you go with demon hunting? There's gotta be other things that crossed your mind, right?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-05 08:46 pm (UTC)When the teasing smile leaves his lips and the light fades from his eyes, gaze trailing to the far side of the room, she thinks she might be right. It has gone just as quickly as it came, so fast that if she blinked, she would miss it, replaced once more by another performative, guarded smile. There is nothing in her voice or expression to show she has ever seen anything; instead, she just blinks at him. "Scary? But I'm sweet, said so yourself," she quips playfully, matter-of-factly, the teasing lilt of her voice taking on a sing-song quality intended to pull a scoff from him, punctuated by a coy look and a savouring swig of her beer. "I'm a woman, if there's one thing we're great at, it's multitasking." Manoeuvring the bottle to her lap, eyes burning with mirth, her head tilts a little to the left as she surveys him. "I can hunt demons, pour drinks, and have evil plans hatched before lunch, but if this is you offering to settle up your tab, I wouldn't say no." Her eyes are warm, her tone playful as she crosses one leg over the other.
His next question makes her pause, lips pursed thoughtfully, both sets of fingers coiling around the bottle in her hold as she ponders her response. It was simple, really; she can hold her own, and she's good with her fists. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of demon-hunting opportunities in these parts, it only seemed natural to put her skill set to good use. This isn't Tifa's first rodeo with monsters; she's fought them her whole life, and she's pretty damn good at it. Instead of telling Dante about how she watched her hometown burn to the ground and how she's fought her whole life to make those responsible atone, instead of sharing her experiences with Avalanche and the desire to be strong enough to protect in the aftermath of tremendous loss, she smiles. The same guarded, performative smile that had graced Dante's lips just moments before, the kind that refuses to give too much away when she's falling apart at the seams. "Oh, you know. Needed a hobby, and knitting was taken," she shrugs flippantly, the tension evaporating from her body in the seconds that follow until the smile becomes lighter. Until it’s genuine, warm, and soft, until she looks more like herself.
Then she's leaning forward until her elbows hit her thighs, to blink across the room at him. "Why? Worried the competition's getting too good?" she breathes, the teasing cadence of her voice accompanied by a raised brow.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-06 11:00 pm (UTC)He'd begun to wonder, turning to glance the way of the coat he'd set aside, a silent sigh lightening his shoulders when he went to pass Tifa and reach into one of the pockets. He'd found his keys, half turning to lean over her and drop them with a clatter on top of his desk. Even when she was sharp and merciless, she still seemed sweet to him. There couldn't have been anything good about what dragged her into his neck of the woods but she was fighting it admirably well. One by one, he unclipped the bindings that held his vest on, hanging it over his coat as if he'd settled on calling it quits for the night. Once it was off, he was left with a skin-tight undershirt with a handful of crescent gouges that exposed skin in places that would have been particularly career-ending to be run through with foot-long claws. A tiny slip more humble than before, he offered Tifa a dry, witty insight for her eager advertisement, "Masking the bitters with something sweet's a bartender's specialty. Maybe I ought to run that tab out longer the next time around?"
Finally, he'd tugged up the cover of one box, lifting up a slice to take a bite with a low hum of satisfaction. Salty, sweet and too good to be healthy, he'd sighed and listened--seating himself on the corner of his desk with his back to her. Each one of the open cuts in his shirt had a matching partner in the back. The off-rhythmic thumping of heavy rain fell on the roof over their heads suddenly, accompanied by a damning peal of thunder.
"It just makes me wonder," Since he was a child, he'd been playing that game. Picking locks and hot-wiring cars while boys and girls his age were adding up letters with their numbers and riding bikes in their neighborhoods, he found himself thinking of so many 'what-ifs' that he'd never experience for himself. How much had Tifa managed to experience? Prying wasn't his business but curiosity won over every time. "You're not in it for the love of it like I am and you've got the skills to run this neighborhood all on your own. Wouldn't even need to get your hands dirty."
As if he needed to emphasize it, he'd popped his thumb in his mouth to do away with a little fleck of sauce, "Just color me curious."
i'm sorry this is so late!!
Date: 2025-06-17 01:48 am (UTC)In a few quick strides, his towering frame looms over the back of her chair. The sound of rustling fabric and the intense heat emanating from his body indicate that he's lingering there. Then she tilts her head, a curious look cast over her right shoulder just in time to see him tug the bindings from his chest. Her gaze immediately falters to his shirt, where it lingers as he moves around to perch himself on the edge of his desk.
Her perfectly arched brows knitted together, her grip tightening around the glass bottle nestled between her fingers as her gaze remained fixed on the torn fabric. The dim lighting of the room illuminated the edges of the jagged, symmetrical gashes in his vest on either side of his body. The remnants of large, sharp claws, from something that had got a little too close for comfort. She imagined torn flesh once lay beneath his ruined shirt, quickly rectified by his unnatural healing abilities. She had known many men who treated their survival as an afterthought, but Dante was something else entirely. Dante didn't just flirt with death; he mocked it, grinning in its face with a hollow recklessness that worried her.
She wants to chastise him, but she lifts her beer bottle to her lips instead, taking a greedy gulp to swallow down any words she doesn't have the right to say. Her gaze dropping from his bare flesh to her bare thighs instead. It's the sound of his voice that pulls it upwards once more, crimson irises lingering on the back of his silver head. He’s curious, subtly asking for more. It is curious, after all, that this red eyed woman from the far side of the planet shows up one day, much too handy with her fists and much too eager to help. Her lips part, opening and closing a few times before she makes any audible sound.
Images of Nibelheim burning, her father, Aerith, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and the iron sky falling on top of the Sector 7 slums flicker in her mind until her stomach knots.
"There are a lot of terrible things back home," she starts, voice small, taking a few moments to collect herself before continuing with a little more clarity, "not all monsters have claws and sharp teeth." It's perhaps the first brutally honest thing she's said to him in all the months she's known him. It alarms her, being this open and honest with another person, let alone one she barely knows anything about. It terrifies her to admit things that might be held against her, that might be perceived as weakness, but she continues all the same. "I've been fighting monsters my whole life, and I'm pretty good at it," she breathes, fingers loosening on the bottle grasped between her gloved fingers. "I've watched too many innocent people die to sit around and do nothing."
Her mind is reeling when the last syllable leaves her lips, worried she's said too much, that she's made things wildly uncomfortable between them. She's almost glad he's facing in the other direction, so that she can't see the reaction on his face. "You do this because you love it?" Quickly tumbles from her lips, attempting to deflect the conversation away from herself. Do you do this because you love it, or is it because you've also lost too much and it dulls the ache inside you for a brief few moments, she wonders. Is it because you also feel the need to protect those who can’t protect themselves? "I doubt anyone wakes up one day and decides they're going to be a demon hunter," she says, punctuated by a disbelieving laugh.
Don't sweat it, you're superb
Date: 2025-06-17 09:46 pm (UTC)It stung a little, putting her at distance, but it would hurt all the same with everyone else who tried to reach out and tug at the threads woven into his disguise. He finished his drink with a tip back and thought about what agony she must have felt to survive Sector 7 and to know there were people left behind, trapped, dead or buried so deep that no one could confirm which was which. Dante leaned onto one hand, his shoulder tilting down and dipping so he could meet her eyes straight. The scraps of a smile he'd kept on hand, just in case, were washed away in thought. Each part of herself she'd offered had become more real to him with each word and, without a shred of a doubt in mind, he understood precisely how much he wanted her to leave. Good people weren't supposed to find their perch in his shop.
He touched his glass to the neck of her bottle, dreadfully sly in his silence offer of a toast. He'd wanted her to follow his eyes as he'd offered her genuine praise but, as the words failed to inch their way out, he found what had caught them and kept them from escaping. It wasn't her fault that she'd been curious. Tifa's eyes, wide with the hope that she could make sense of a mystery and understand him, caught him and wrestled at his heart. His instincts, manufactured to protect everyone but himself, urged him to put an end to it. That she'd be kind despite the pain and effort of it made her more human than anyone else and it left lances through his heart. He hung over her, his eyes flashing grey beneath the halo of his hair held just over her, "Y'know, we can't all be heroes like you."
He smiled, sickeningly arrogant--or at least that's the way he wanted to seem. Dante was coarse, well aware of what it felt like to be beside him and to exchange words as if the greatest burden he'd undertaken was to think and speak with the veiled presence of a monster lingering beside, "To answer your question?"
"It's because I'm bored," As far as he'd been concerned, it was the least humanizing answer he could produce. A profession that brought misery and death to everyone who'd been involved and he'd just wanted to kill the time? There was no coming back from cruelty put to such a crude shape.