Disclaimer: I don't own Dissidia: Final Fantasy.

For Tifa, life was good.

She had a family. Denzel and Marlene loved her, and even Cloud becoming more open and affectionate.

She had a job. It wasn't perfect, but it was something she was reasonably good at and enjoyed, not to mention it was conveniently below her home, so she didn't have to worry about getting home on time or anything.

She had friends. The best friends in the world. Sure, they were an odd lot; she'd never imagined that the best thing she would have to a close friend would be a hyperactive, immature ninja, but she never would have exchanged Yuffie for anything. Barret, Cid and Reeve were older than her, Vincent too, and Red way more mature than her age, but they understood her and she understood them, and she loved them and would have fought to death for them.

Her life was good. Not perfect, no one's life was perfect, but good. Wonderfully good.

But there were moments. Times when she felt… as if something was missing. As if this wasn't her life, this wasn't her family, not her home, not her friends.

She dreamed of a vast, bizarre landscape. Of huge castles and fortresses, standing tall and lonely, some crumbled to ruins, some so well maintained that she half expected to see someone living there. She remembered walking on grey cliffs under stormy skies, through strange, confusing mazes and rooms, on islands suspended in mid-air. Wandering, wandering. Looking for something, or someone. She couldn't remember.

'There is nothing to remember,' she told herself. 'People are always looking for things in dreams.'

She had never seen places like that, she knew this, knew this, but somehow her dreams were so vivid that she doubted herself.

Sometimes she remembered fighting. Of course, she'd fought a lot. Half her life had been spent fighting. But these were different. Brief, vivid flashes, of jumping and punching and kicking her way through the aforementioned landscape, fighting enemies she'd never even seen, enemies stranger than even bizzaro Sephiroth and Jenova.

Wandering around all day. No children, no home, no responsibilities.

She was pining for her lost childhood, she decided.

Sometimes she would see faces. A tall, serious girl with pink hair, always silent; a smaller one, with a kind face and mismatched eyes, smiling and talking to her. Sometimes when Yuffie chattered away about inane things, and Shelke sat with a blank look on her face, she imagined the two other girls, who'd been closer in age and closer in temperament to her. And she couldn't even remember their names.

'They don't have names, they don't have ages,' she thought firmly. 'How could they, when they're not real?'

But she could still hear their voices, and sometimes she knew, with irrational surety, that some things, pink-haired-girl would not have liked.

She dreamt of men. Younger than Barrett and Cid, more cheerful than Vincent, more human than Rex XIII, although she remembered one of them having a tail.

'Not remembered. Imagined.'

A tall one with silver hair, but smiling and laughing, unlike Sephiroth, dressed as handsomely as a prince. A guy with a gun and long, black hair, one with sandy hair, but both of them with sunny, optimistic dispositions. All of them friends, who'd helped her out of… what?

'Nothing! Nothing! Stop thinking of men who don't exist!' She mentally yelled at herself.

But no matter how many times she told herself that, her mind refused to accept it. They had been friends, allies.

She remembered thinking of them as family.

At that point she would hug Denzel and Marlene, call Yuffie up talk to her for the longest time, invite all her friends over and drown herself in their company.

But then she remembered him.

He had been handsome. He had been tall, well built, with long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She remembered the magnificent purple armor he wore, that fearsome dragon's helmet with it. She remembered the skilled fighter he'd been.

She remembered fighting alongside him, remembered the skilled and graceful fighter he'd been.

She remembered talking to him. He'd been serious, but she remembered him talking to her, listening to her, telling her things. She knew that they'd spent time together in that lonely, barren place she didn't remember about.

When she would see Cloud come home at night, on the bike and in the clothes that made him the desire of girls everywhere, she would think of Kain, walking towards her with his spear and his armor and that calm strong aura of his that she could feel around herself, and a small, small, terrible part of her would wish it had been so.

When Cloud would sit at the table, talking to the kids, and he would look up and give her a smile, she would remember Kain, looking up at her, confused and resigned for some stupid reason that she couldn't remember.

And when she would go to bed, and Cloud would come to her door and wish her good-night, she remembered his voice, his face, the soft concern in his concern in his voice as he said to her: "You're safe."

She remembered him saving her.

She remembered his name. Kain.

Kain.

She'd never met anyone named Kain in her life, yet she loved him.

She wondered if she was going crazy.

But somehow, considering them crazy delusions seemed wrong to her, as if she was doing them a disservice. Even though her mind denied their existence, told her that they were nothing more than figments of her imagination, her heart told her that somewhere, sometime, in another life, she had known these people, lived with them, loved them, and fought along with them until the end.

But now, she was home.