Author: Wallwalker
Title: Checkers
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Character: Tifa
Word Count: appx. 900
Rating: SFW, no warnings apply

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Tifa found the little game set a long time ago, not long after she’d first arrived in Midgar. She was living in Sector Five at the time, and the set had been collecting dust in a nearby second-hand shop that the young proprietor had inherited from his old grandpa. The set, along with most of the stock, had been there for so long that the man had no idea where it had come from.

It caught her eye, even though she hadn’t played checkers in years. Her father hadn’t cared for the game at all, but her mother had loved it. She had tried to teach her when she was young, but after a while Tifa hadn’t had the patience; there were other kids to hang out with, places to explore, too many other things to do. Their weekly games had fallen by the wayside, and then her mother had fallen ill. Tifa had never been able to look at their checkers set again after that; it had left her with a lump in her throat, and playing with anyone else would’ve felt like leaving her mother behind.

She left the store a few gil poorer, and with the box tucked under her arm.

-

A few weeks later, after a few rough jobs and a lot of sleep, Tifa finally had the chance to check and see what shape the game was in.

She could immediately see why it had been so cheap. The board was mostly intact, but stained with spilled beer and grease, and worn down at the edges. The checkers were cheap plastic, some of them stuck together, and even after she pulled them apart and wiped them down she could see she didn’t have enough even for one game. The red checkers were okay, if barely - there were fourteen of them, enough to set a board and have one to spare - but there were only nine of the black ones.

She stared at the incomplete game, shaking her head. What had she expected? And who would she have played with anyway, even if she’d had a full set? She should’ve saved the gil for a rainy day; this thing wasn’t going to do her any good.

The thought of throwing it away crossed her mind, but even then Tifa had learned not to toss out anything she’d spent money on. Maybe she could find someone else who would take it, she thought as she put it away.

-

For some reason, she never quite forgot about the checkers set. She didn’t think about it all the time, but when she was at home she always noticed the little box on her shelf, and would remember the lost pieces and worn-out board and the way her mother had laughed when they’d played together. She’d been so proud, the first time Tifa had managed to jump one of her pieces.

She’d recently started tending a bar for the first time, this one a little dive in Sector Three; it would be years before she would gain possession of a bar of her own. She was still learning, but at least the people who owned the place were being patient with her, probably because having a pretty lady bartender would bring in more business. Hopefully she’d figure out how to mix drinks sooner rather than later, she thought.

One night she spent hours cleaning up after a particularly big night, and most of the mess had come from bottled beer. People had left the bottle caps all over, and she’d collected a big pile of them, sitting on the counter. She’d been about to throw them away, but something about the shape was nagging at her - larger than most bottle caps she’d seen, round and flat instead of jagged edges, most of them plain white. They reminded her of something...

She felt a bit foolish when she finally figured it out. But her bosses didn't give her a hard time when she asked if she could take them home, so she ended up saving a lot of them. It became a hobby of hers. She picked up cheap crafting putty and filled the caps, and used more putty to smooth the edges. The paint that she could find wasn’t great, but it stayed well enough, and that was the main thing she needed. They were a little heavier and a little smaller than the light, plastic pieces that had come with the set, but that was fine with her; she kept making more, until she had a full set of her improvised pieces and could keep the old ones in a small bag inside of the game box.

Part of her still wondered why she was bothering. She didn’t have anyone to play with, she would think as she opened the game and started working on the board, smoothing and filling in the worst of the scratches with more paint. She hadn’t played since she’d been a kid, anyway, so who’d want to play with her? She barely knew how to play anymore; she knew how to jump and which ways the pieces could move, but any kind of strategy would be beyond her. Maybe the whole thing was a waste of time.

Every time she thought about giving it up, though, she thought of her mother, and how they'd laughed together when they'd played their games. It was a nice reminder, and that was worth keeping, especially in a place like that.