A brief AN: I haven't gotten any farther than this chapter, so it may be a while till the next update (if I remember to, at all. Not very good at this updating business.) I promise I'm not a scary person, so if you like it, let me know (a good motivation for faster updates.) Likewise, if it's horrible (a good hint to haul my butt out and never return.) Onwards now…
Blood Red
From the corner of her eye, Tifa forced herself to access the grisly scene strewn before her.
Dozens of slivered corpses propagated the sidewalk—laid out in an almost decorative contrast of crimson over slate. The manifestation of red was enough to give any blood fetishist a reason to jack off for the rest of their life. Men, women, children… Tifa counted the bodies.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four… thirteen, fourteen… twenty-eight, twenty-nine…
Surprisingly enough, she wasn't as horrified by the deceased forms as she should have been. There was a man sprawled beside her, slumped in a puddle of sticky black blood. If she touched his face, she could've felt the final tremors of life leak from his skin. With a quivering hand, Tifa reached over to push a strand of snarled hair from his cheek, "Vincent. Wake up."
Cloud was laughing. Tifa refused to look at him.
"Vincent," she shook his shoulder with her free hand, a little harder than she intended, "I know you're not dead. You're too vain to die looking like this."
Her vision was starting to blur. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse, "You look like shit, Valentine."
Any moment now, she expected him to quirk his eyebrow and send her a bemused glare. He was always trying to look scary, the pretentious jerk.
"Idiot," Tifa imagined whacking him over the head with a rubber mallet. She tried to pry his eyes open, "What's wrong with you?" Her throat was burning. "You're so lazy. Wake up already."
Cloud was still laughing. It surprised her that a laughing Cloud worried her more than a silent Cloud. "He's dead, you know." His tone was lighthearted—a foil to her cracking interior.
"Don't talk to me." She didn't want to deal with him now, when her only reaction would be to get mad. Tifa didn't want to get mad. Not at Cloud.
"Don't be bitter, Lockheart." There was a smile plastered on his face. It looked odd to her—like it'd been painted on by a loony artisan. "It's all for the best."
"Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about." She couldn't remember the last time she'd spoken so roughly to him.
It was doubtful that her words got through to his head. Cloud frowned off into the distance, swinging his sword around in the playful manner of a kid twirling a baton. A really huge, freaky-looking baton.
"I'm at a dilemma, Lockheart."
She wished he'd stop calling her that.
"I don't think I should let you live," He stopped swinging his sword long enough to spare her a glance, "But I don't want to kill you either."
Cloud crouched over, forcing her chin up with a pale finger. The friendliness was almost frightening, "Maybe I'm just a nice guy at heart." His nails grazed languidly over her jawline, still sticky with the pasty tang of blood and sweat.
She couldn't help but scoff at his statement, "It's too bad you haven't got one, huh?"
He was smiling again. "What, a heart?"
There was something cold pressing against her stomach. Without the slightest shift in expression, Cloud drove a knife into her gut. The crisp blade sent a fresh crush of heat coursing through her veins—a writhing hot spell that opposed the ice in her fingers.
Cloud you bastard, that's a kitchen knife.
She was pretty sure she called him something along the lines of a womanish cream puff. It was more amusing to him than insulting— but at this point, Tifa couldn't really hear anything she was saying anymore. It was probably for the best. Only half-conscious of the horrendous suffocating donkey noises she was making, it struck her that she was probably going to die like this. Kneeling over a drain pipe, unattractive donkey-bawling in tow, a goddamn fruit knife stuck to her midriff for fuck's sake….
How uncouth.
Little freckles of blood sprayed across the sidewalk as another violent coughing fit attacked her body. Her eyelids were getting heavy. Cloud's hand gripped her neck. The whisk of his breath on her face was sending a hypothetical army of ants through her spine. She became angry with the shiver threatening to wrack her insides.
Goddamn maniac. Stupid, panty-waisted, yellow-haired maniac….
"You're not going to die." She heard the goddamn maniac say. How strange—the air was turning dark. "You're too angry to die just yet. Better luck next time, eh?"
She responded by leaking more blood over the gritty sidewalk, Cloud's masterpiece of crimson and guts, before crawling into the beckoning blackness that welcomed her.
Pathetic, Lockheart. A fruit knife, of all things….
----
Tifa awoke to the incandescent glare of artificial luminescence against her face.
It couldn't be heaven.
The holy afterlife should be able to afford actual light, for one. Not the cheap, dollar-store bulbs that hung over the cellars of interrogation vaults. And Tifa could be fairly sure that the higher powers wouldn't let a Turk anywhere near their pearly gates.
Which meant there was only one option left.
"Am I in hell?"
The abruptness of her revival startled the inattentive redhead guarding her cell, who seemed to be more amused with the buttons of his jacket than the job at hand.
He tilted his head around to regard her with a disquieting smirk, "With the civil pleasure of my company? Not a chance."
Hadn't she dealt with enough jerkish testosterone for one day? Tifa closed her eyes and returned to her former position, "Great. Just great. Dear God, I would like to die now, if you don't mind--"
He frowned, "Hey now--"
"--Preferably through a blindingly illuminative thunderbolt that would fry this cocky pomelo-head to a crisp in the process," She continued, noting the bed she'd been reclining on was rough against her skin. Tifa moved her hand to scratch at the itch irritating her leg…
…And found she'd been stripped down to her underwear.
She didn't try to move anymore, after that.
The redhead made a clucking noise at the back of his throat, and to Tifa's displeasure, twisted his lanky frame around in his chair to face her.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
To be safe, Tifa pulled the blanket all the way to her chin, despite the way the wool was stitched together like fibrous elephant bristles. "Should I?" The material pricked at her arms and scratched the jut of her knees.
"It's only polite, you know, considering the number of favors I've done you so far."
Something clicked at the back of her head, "Reno."
Reno tapped his finger to his skull, simulating soft clack-y sounds against the sheath of his mammoth goggles, "Smart girl."
By then, he'd taken notice of her discomfort, and his grin grew even ass-ier, if it were possible. "So shy. I've seen it all already, you know."
The little…
She shut her eyes in frustration, and would've reached through the bars to knock his face off if she wasn't half-naked. For a moment, Tifa contemplated tying her hair into a lasso and strangling him with it.
He picked up on her animosity. "Jeez, slow the hemorrhage fuel, will you? No offense, but you're not really my type."
"Right, because I have hair and I'm not a guy."
"Hey, I resent what you're implying." The toying expression hadn't so much as budged, "Don't be bitter. You'd be a lot more attractive to me if you weren't such a bitch."
Don't be bitter, Lockheart.
Why did all these men think alike? Tifa turned her head away from his teasing mug, a faint reminiscent of Cloud's unsettling smile. She chose to fix her stare at a rooted crack in the ceiling, willing it to grow bigger and bigger until it finally enveloped the entire room.
The miniature Cloud in her head continued to mock her.
You're too angry to die just yet.
It jumped from space to space, immersing its obnoxious sunshine-hair in the opaqueness of her mind.
Better luck next time, eh?
"So, who was the black underwear for?"
The hell…? Tifa let herself divert her attention back to the Turk before her. His gaze was piercing, and oddly attentive. She was drawing a blank, "What?"
Reno shifted impatiently in the seat, slinging his gun across his shoulder in an offbeat stretch, "You don't wear black underwear to bake cookies in. Come on, fess up. I won't tell. Who's the secret loverboy?"
"You're an idiot."
"Valentine? Barrett? The old man who sold beer nuts by the orphanage?" He lowered his voice to a taunting murmur, "Was it Cloud?"
Strange. Her face was wet.
He knew he struck a nerve. He had to. "Speaking of the featherhead, I suppose he's not feeling much like himself lately, eh?"
The miniature Cloud was back in her head, bouncing from one wall to the next. Still smiling, it punctured the inside of her brain until scarlet mists squirted from the fleshy crevices.
"Mind control's a funny thing, Lockheart."