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It was half past one in the morning when Seventh Heaven announced last call. Vincent was aware of this because he was perched on the roof watching as the patrons spilled out of the bar and into the streets. The door seemed to simply stay held open until the mass of people was suddenly gone, and just before it slammed shut, a hand caught it from inside the bar. There was a pause, and then Tifa stepped out. Vincent was sure that she couldn’t see him, not in the dark, but she looked along the tops of the buildings anyway. She smiled and tilted her head toward the inside of the bar.
Tifa stepped inside, the door closing behind her. Vincent gave it another moment, just long enough to be sure he wouldn’t run into any last-minute patrons, and dropped to the ground. She’d left the door unlocked, and a cheerful bell announced his arrival before he even stepped in.
She looked up from the counter she had started wiping down, and her smile widened.
“Hello, Vincent,” she said, her voice softer than nearly any other he’d ever heard. It was soothing, listening to her talk.
(It should have been soothing to listen to Aerith, but for all that they had loved her, she had an uncanny way about her. She had often been too something when speaking, too boisterous to too forward or too distant, and there had never been a rhyme or reason or rhythm to it that Vincent had noticed. Given the choice, he’d have always preferred to listen to Tifa. He supposed, though, that none of them had a choice anymore.)
“You called,” he said, but before he could pull out his phone to show her, she reached down and produced two large wine glasses and a bottle of red. She held it up for him to see.
“Come. Sit. I’ll pour you something,” Tifa said, even as she moved to do just that. The wine’s cork echoed through the quiet of the bar.
Vincent hesitated and glanced back over his shoulder. He followed her, and when she patted the bar’s surface, he sat on the edge of the barstool.
She poured wine for both of them and leaned against the bar as she pushed his glass across the scratched up surface. There were shadows under eyes— exhaustion from the day catching up to her— and while most of those who stayed to last call helped out, there were still tables full of plates and glasses and bottles that still needed to be wiped down even after they were bussed, not to mention the sticky floor needed to be mopped and the till that needed to be counted and—
"It's my bar, not yours," Tifa said, and her voice drew Vincent's attention back to her face. She smiled, and while yes, he could see how tired she was, she was happier these days. They all were, he supposed. All of AVALANCHE had done what they'd set out to do. The Planet continued on its journey, and the sun still rose, and Sephiroth was—
"You're thinking so loud I can hear it," Tifa protested, and she pushed his wine glass all the way into his hand.
He looked down into it, a very small smile touching his lips. "Am I?" he asked.
Tifa grinned and took a sip from her glass before she nodded. "I don't know how Reeve stands listening to those gears turn. If you have enough energy for all that, you have enough energy to help me close up for the night."
Vincent raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you called me for?" He raised his wine glass to his lips, but he didn't drink from it just yet. He breathed it in first, savoring the hint of wood in the aroma. It had been aged in a cask somewhere, and he wondered just how much she'd spent on it.
How much gil had she just wasted, opening it for him—
"You can mop the floor," Tifa said cheerfully, and when he raised an eyebrow, her grin widened just a little. "The mop is in the closet. You remember where the closet is?"
Vincent set the glass back down on the bar and stood. He unbuckled his cloak, left it on the barstool, and he headed to the small closet just before the stairs. There was, in fact, a mop in there, and he knew from having stayed with Tifa through the closing routine that she already had the bucket by the sink in the bar proper. She used it on and off all night to wipe down the tables.
There were boxes in the closet as well, and Vincent hesitated for only a moment, studying the careful print that faced the door on one of them. 'Solstice decorations.' It wasn't quite Tifa's hand, and the letters weren't quite even on their sizing yet. Marlene must have labeled them last year then, when Tifa had put everything away.
He took the mop and closed the door.
When he came back to the bar, Tifa had the bucket on the floor on the patron side of the bar, ready for him to use. She was bussing the tables and wiping them down with an ease born of too many years of practice, and he watched her for only a moment before he started on the task she'd given him. He could hear her rearranging the chairs as she cleared each table so they'd be on the tables instead of on the floor.
There was no one left who would have set him to mopping a floor, was there? His mother, perhaps, if she still lived, but he wasn't about to take a trip to Wutai to find out. Yuffie would hear somehow, and he wasn't quite ready for the prying that would invite.
The floor was almost perpetually sticky, no matter how often it was mopped, but he focused on the task, and when he was finally done, the wood gleamed a little. It would need another pass, possibly two before it really shone in the dim light.
There was a tap on the bar, and he looked up to see Tifa sitting lightly on the stool beside where he'd left his cloak.
"Come on," she said. "Sit down with me. Finish this wine."
His glass was still there, untouched. He brought the mop with him so that he could set it down in the bucket and lean it against the bar. Tifa waited for him to move his cloak another stool over and sit, and then she held out his glass to him. As he took it from her, she sipped from her own again, and she looked across the bar to the rows of bottles.
There were not nearly as many bottles as he associated with bars, and he had plenty of memories of them from his days with the Turks.
He and Veld had spent more evenings in buildings almost exactly like this than he cared to count, and—
He brought the glass up to his lips to taste it.
Cedar barrels, he decided. The wine had been aged in cedar barrels, which meant they had been sourced from a mountain range so—
"It's from the forties," Tifa said into the silence. She didn't look away from the rows of bottles, and he wondered if she was taking inventory, working even as she seemed to relax. She leaned forward, propping her elbow up on the wood, and put her chin in her hand. "Just think." Her gaze slid over to him, bright and sparkling with her amusement. "It's older than you are."
For a moment, they were both quiet and studying one another. She still hadn't told him what, exactly, she'd called him for, and he knew better than to try to pressure her any further. Tifa, for all her softness, had a core of mythril, and if she was delaying asking...
They both broke the silence at the same time.
"Where's Marlene—"
"Will you come—"
They paused, and Tifa was the one who laughed a little, looking back down into her wine glass. She gave it a little swirl. It was Reeve's motion when he had a wine glass, one of the countless ways he distracted himself during a conversation or bought a moment to think before he responded, and Vincent tried to think of how much time the two of them could possibly have spent together that Tifa could have picked it up. It was more than just the swirl of the wine; it was how she did it, the angle of her wrist and the way her fingers cupped the glass. Then, having recomposed herself, she smiled up at him. Soft and easy.
"Marlene is with Barret for a few days. They're coming back the day after tomorrow for the holiday."
"And Denzel?"
Tifa tilted her head, and she raised an eyebrow. "With Reeve for the evening. They wanted to go to Midgar to put flowers on Ruvie's grave. Reeve was going to talk to him about a study program tonight."
And Vincent didn't have to ask about Cloud. The holidays were hard for him, and if Reeve and Denzel had gone to Midgar, then Cloud was almost certainly spending the evening in the church.
No wonder Tifa had the bar open.
"Reno is going to come over tomorrow," she said. "And Rude will come with him, and they're going to bring a tree."
"Nibel tradition," Vincent murmured, and he brought his wine glass to his lips again. "The tree couldn't have been easy to source this far east."
"Apparently, there are some in the mountains between here and Junon. I didn't ask if that meant they were planning on cutting it down themselves." Tifa looked down at the bar, tracing one of the lines of wood grain with her thumbnail. "But it isn't that far from Healen, so maybe they are. Either way, tomorrow, I'll be busy with them, and then Solstice is the day after that—"
"Which just leaves tonight."
Her smile faded a little, and her voice was softer when she agreed with, "Which just leaves tonight."
Vincent sipped his wine.
Tifa looked down into her glass, and then, after another long moment of quiet, she looked up at him once more. Suddenly, sitting here with her, those words echoing in the space between them, he knew what she'd called him for. It wasn't to help her close the bar. It wasn't to ask him to do anything.
She'd called him because, faced with the echoing silence of her life in the night ahead, something in her had wavered. Something in her had looked into the dark and shuddered at the thought.
He knew the sensation.
Her lips parted to draw a small breath before she spoke again.
"You can't put the tree up in here," Vincent said, cutting her off gently. There was no reason to make her explain. He set the glass down.
Tifa blinked up at him, momentarily startled by the declaration. Then she softened. Her smile was warm. "I can't?"
Vincent tipped his head as he looked around the room, and then he nodded toward the windows in the front. "If I recall," he said slowly, his eyes sliding over toward again, "there are supposed to be bells in those windows."
Tifa laughed, and she picked up the wine bottle to refill both of their glasses. "Well then. How lucky that I have a box of decorations from last year, isn't it?"
"It is most fortuitous," he agreed, and he gave her a small smile of his own. "I'll get the boxes, and you can tell me what goes where."
And then, gods willing, she'd be able to get some sleep while he worked.
He turned, and her hand flashed out, catching him by that gauntleted wrist. He went perfectly still for the touch, but she let go almost as soon as she had touched him. When he looked back at her face, her smile was very slight. Apologetic.
"Will you stay?"
And there it was. The real reason she'd called him. The Nibel girl, so used to spending the entire week leading up to the Winter Solstice with bonfires and songs and family, and somehow, she still hadn't ever adjusted to the loneliness that was city life.
He nodded. "I'll stay. Until Solstice."
The smile she gave him was almost blindingly bright.
"That's plenty," she promised.
And he had no doubt it would be. Until next year.