This chapter is dedicated to icicle9944. Happy Birthday!

Always

He was always there.

That was what Tifa remembered Cloud to be when he was young – always there.

Whether she was hanging out with the rest of the kids in the main street, or practicing the piano at home. She remembered him, too shy to ask to join in when he wanted to, or looking out of his window into her room where she practiced.

She often wondered why Cloud would not approach her if he wanted to join in their games or listen to her play, why he turned pink every time she talked to him. It was not as though they were strangers, when in fact they had grown up next door to each other.

The day her mother passed away, Cloud was there too. He followed her up into the mountains when she was upset. It was a risky thing to do, and it was later evidenced by Tifa's fall and subsequent seven day coma, but he followed her anyway. He was there.

When they had grown up a little, Cloud asked to meet her one night at the well. He had a strange tone in his voice then, and she wondered what had happened to him. That night, he spoke of his ambition to join SOLDIER, and become famous around the world, much like Sephiroth, who enthralled many around the world with his feats, and led to a surge of boys and young men joining the army in the hope to emulating the one they saw as a hero. Tifa saw Cloud that night for what he really was – ambitious, courageous – instead of what he had shown to everyone else in the past – anti-social and aloof. That night, Tifa made Cloud promise that when he became famous and if she was in trouble, he would come and rescue him.

He promised to do that. Always.

Some years later, during the Nibelheim incident, he was there for her too. Even though he never became famous, he was there, protecting her to the best of his ability.

He was always there.

Tonight, the sky was darker than usual. There was no one in the bar except herself as Barret had taken the children on a short vacation in Costa de Sol. It was late, at almost one in the morning. Cloud was supposed to be back home by this time, but he wasn't.

Tifa thought about the things that could possibly happen to Cloud. He could have been in an accident; he could have been seriously injured by a monster…

Then she forced herself to blank out such thoughts from her mind. After all, Cloud had ridden in worse conditions and on less sleep than the five hours he had the night before, and he had fought battles tougher than the battles fought with the monsters around Edge. She took a bath, was about to pick out her nightdress from the wardrobe when her eyes spied one of Cloud's old shirts in the corner of her wardrobe. That shirt had somehow ended up in her pile when the laundry had been sorted out and she had tried to give it back to him, but he said that the shirt was old already and that he didn't need it anymore, but rather than following Cloud's instructions to throw the shirt away, she had hidden it in her own wardrobe, for sometime when she might need it.

For times like these when she needed him.

She slipped into the shirt and the hem of her shirt fell slightly above her knees. Despite the fact that the shirt had been lying in her wardrobe for sometime, it still had the faint scent of cologne, the one that was so familiar to her. It was Cloud's scent.

She completed the pajamas with a pair of cotton shorts and fell into her bed. Just then, a flash of lightning illuminated the room, followed by the sound of rumbling thunder. The pitter patter of the rain on the windowpanes drowned out all sound from the street – the sound of her neighbors celebrating their son's eighteenth birthday late into the night; the sound of traffic in the street. It drowned the sound, but it wasn't enough to drown her thoughts.

Tifa moved her pillow so that it covered her ears, and muffled the sound of thunder, but it still did not muffle the thoughts that the rain had brought along with it. Rainy days reminded her of dark clouds, and the thought of dark clouds reminded her of an unhappy Cloud. She didn't want to think of an unhappy Cloud, because she wasn't happy when he wasn't. God, she knew she sounded like a hormonal teenager having her first crush, but that was the way it was.

The tick tock of the clock reminded her that time was passing slowly, and that the night was long. Soon she found herself thinking about Nibelheim all over again. How she lost almost everything she ever had, and how she was so close to losing him. Tears fell from her face as she relived the horror of Nibelheim. He wasn't obligated to fight Sephiroth, and had almost lost his life doing so, but he did it. For her, but what was the point of her living if she had lost him back then? She closed her eyes, and she could almost see the gleam in Sephiroth's eyes as he had slashed her with his sword, the same gleam that he wore in his eyes as he killed the villagers. It frightened her, and a scream was rising to her throat. She was frightened. So, so frightened. She needed him right now…

A hand gently caressed her hair, and another touched her cheek softly, wiping the tears that had fallen from her eyes. She opened her eyes and saw a pair of bright blue eyes looking at her with a concerned look.

"Tifa…is anything wrong?"

Cloud was home, and Tifa smiled a small smile back at him. She reached around him, embracing him and hiding her face in the crook of his neck. It was so comforting, but this comfort, strangely, only made her sob, louder and louder. One of his hands ran through her hair, and Tifa held the other hand in one of her own.

"Shush…everything's alright now."

"I'm glad you're home."

Then she realized that Cloud was always there for her when she needed him. He wasn't always punctual but he still made it on time. If she had ever thought he was going to abandon her, then she was a fool to think so, but right now she was in his arms.

She wasn't going to start doubting his promise now.

A/N: Hopefully, I'll actually complete this series of prompts. Also as the chapters are one shots, they aren't in actual chronological order.

Next Chapter: Minutes - Cloud muses on the gift of life, and about living life to the fullest.