oh wow, I love the detailing. Life's just gone into the wild spin cycle, the dead are walking, the would-be destroyer of the whole planet is in your attic, the leader of the last free nation on the face of the planet has just died, one of your friends is now the prime target for every ambitious Wutai clan and Shinra reconstructionist on the planet, and yet they still have to make breakfast. Looking through the fridge, the ex-dead guy finds the ham and the strawberry jam, the details with the toaster... the contrast is great, and kind of lends to the whole kind of sense of discombobulation that she'd have to be feeling in a situation like that but that so many fics just skip right over.

I also really like your Tifa better than canonTifa, but my reason for not liking canonTifa has mostly to do with the "she's been the victim of the Japanese-male-game-designers' concept of female characterization" thing. They take a woman who can punch through steel and make her big focus point "promise me you'll come rescue me when (not if, but when) I need it (because I'm just a girl and couldn't rescue myself)" rather than "hell yeah I'll rescue myself (and you along with me because you're lost inside your own skull and the lifestream at the same time and could really use a rescue too, and me rescuing you is OKAY)". I go graaaawr at the hardwired misogyny of game designers and shounen manga writers a lot. ^^;;;;

Whereas your Tifa isn't waiting around for anyone to fix the world for her, and she doesn't have to wait for Cloud to be offstage before she gets a chance to be awesome in her own right -- she's right there with them making her own decisions about everything that comes up, the very first we saw of her she tried to take on Sephiroth by herself, she's not wimping out for anybody! And I really like that. I wish the men who write these things on both sides of the Pacific would take their cues from women's competence more often.