A/N: This is for Axel, who is a whore, but a whore I adore. (Tee hee, rhyme!) This insanity first started when we both attended our first con; I was Tifa and she was Belial. We took a lot of really sexually suggestive pictures for the people who requested and when looking at our own, realized hey, Belial/Tifa was pretty mad hot. So, to celebrate our crack OTP, I wrote some crack!fic. Serious stuff, too! YAY. Reviews are fun, if you so desire!
Promise
She runs and runs to chase her promise, to search out the light. Because she knows he just has to come back, he just has to, and she doesn't know what she'll do without him.
And her promise takes her far away, very very far away, past anything and everything she knows. She runs past the oceans, goes to a place where they run dry and the church bells can't be heard. It takes her to a place where the skies are bright blood-red, where the road is paved with skulls the size of her own, where spirits cry and moan and beg for forever-death, beg for forever-sleep.
She thinks she sees something moving, thinks she sees something bright and beautiful and victorious (Cloud, is that you?) and she chases it down the skull-paved path.
And inside the shadows, the clown only smiles.
---
When she is exhausted and can run no more, she knows she's gotten herself into. She is somewhere she should not be, and unless she wants to die, she must find a way out, before--
"One would think it's already too late," comes a voice from the shadows, and before she can even blink, she has hands at her throat, she is pinned where she stands, and she can barely breathe.
"Who are you?" she chokes out.
"One has many names," says the pale made-up face. "Belial, the Mad Hatter - whichever you prefer, my dear…?"
"Tifa," she supplies, curtly.
The hands go tighter.
She spits it out, red eyes flashing: "Lockhart."
"And have you?" asks the Mad Hatter.
"What?"
"One wishes to know if you have locked your heart away," Belial says simply, with a loose smile.
"I really should," Tifa mutters darkly, eyes scanning the cave (still no sign of him, where is he?).
"I see my pretty little Lockhart is looking for something," Belial sing-songs, removing his (her? no, his, no, her...its?) hat. "Might this Hatter be of assistance?"
"Have you seen a guy with spiky hair?" she asks, and adds: "Blonde. He was probably fighting another guy with long silver hair. His name's Cloud Strife."
Belial places fingers on hir hat, only smirks. "Chasing your dearest love to the ends of the earth?"
"I never said he was my dearest love," Tifa responds, her face flushed with embarrassment.
"Then why come all this way, when you're so far from home?" Belial inquires, eyebrows piqued, painted lips pointing up.
"I have to find him," she insists, eyes pleading, "or no one else will."
There is a long silence.
"I have seen him come this way," the Mad Hatter admits, at last.
---
And from Belial's sinful mouth she hears everything, hears how the battle had brought them to the center of Hell itself, to the center of Belial's domain. And for entertainment he-she let them continue, let them defy gravity and throw overly large swords at each other, and Belial had adored it, it made he-she feel like a gladiator spectator.
They had been each other's downfall, fighting a war that would never end, and Tifa knew she would never see Cloud again.
They were no longer here, no longer anywhere, and if they were not in hir domain, then they are not of concern to Belial, and neither are they concern to Tifa.
Pretty Tifa, who Belial asks a promise of.
---
She will stay here, forever, who hasn't any choice in the matter, who will fight and scream but will eventually give in, the way they all do, and return Belial's actions, because what else does she have to live for, anyway?
(Just a promise she made a long time ago, and she's already broken it because you can't keep promises to the dead.)
So she promises to stay with Belial as long as she may live, till death do they part.
---