Somewhere along the line he realized she dreamt of flowers too.
He'd never seen Tifa go to the church. He was the one who walked there in the mornings, shower water still clinging to his arms, air still dewy and wet in his mouth. He'd lie in them, the full yellow ones, the new buds still soft and white toward the middle and all the new grass in between.
But she was always up when he came back, his clothes damp, sleeves, collars, tinted green. She was always up, drinking coffee somewhere in the house. He knew she liked it acrid and black from the days they'd stayed up, eyes red rimmed and sticking to eyelids, thinking about mountains burning, and a General's sad, vicious laughter.
He remembered that Aerith had liked hers with copious amounts of cream, mild, and toffee colored.
More and more often as he laid in the garden, he thought of that time ago when Tifa wore that skirt and Aerith wore a pink dress he remembers more for the time she'd let him raise it up above her thighs.
He hadn't had that in so long. And Tifa had put that skirt somewhere in the attic years ago.
He thinks about it for days before he goes digging one morning, through the dust and the boxes of assorted liquors. He holds the skirt in his hands, and it is hard leather. Hard like her fists used to be. And he smiles because it is a veritable scrap of clothing, but he feels a pang deep in his heart for things he once wanted but doesn't anymore.
He bent his face down into the skirt, smelled age and must, but an underlying sweetness he remembered to be in her every movement in battle, the punches, the kicks, the reeling back to the hard earth, which used to scare the hell out of him. But she always seemed to have her own potions on hand.
He wondered if it was around then when she realized he wasn't any kind of savior, at least not the kind he had apparently promised to be. The fame he had, seeing his face on television made him sick. People were so ready to make connections where there were none, people were so ready to have an explanation, and he didn't understand shit about the how or whys in any of it, but a little humor could be found in that all he could do was stand dumbly by and play the reluctant celebrity hero.
There was a pink hair ribbon in the pocket of her skirt. He sat shocked, still.
"What are you doing?" Tifa's voice is soft in the doorway, and all he can see is her shadow. His first impulse is to be embarrassed, maybe claim that it isn't what it looks like, but it definitely is, and the smell of leather and fight is still in his nose, throat. But it's that hair ribbon that he now has in his hands that makes him grind his teeth, stand up as Tifa is coming into the light.
"What is this?" He says, holding it out for her to see. She only bites her lip,closes her eyes.
"Put that back."
"No, what-"
"Cloud , please."
"This is her ribbon Tifa." He says, as if she didn't know. It's a small thing, but they both know it isn't. The cup of coffee is trembling in Tifa's hand, and he doesn't understand.
"Why are you up here Cloud?" He looks at her, and she sees the incomprehension in his eyes, which reads more familiar than anything else. But around the bright blue edges is something that looks like anger, seems like panic.
She can't read him as well as she used to.
"I remembered-what you used to look like when you fought." the skirt is clenched in his other hand, and he wishes he'd never come to dig it up. He won't be diverted though. "Why do you have it Tifa?" He looks down on it, and the pink in the ribbon is faded, dirty. "Why would you keep it when-"
"When what? When you deserve it more?" She says almost automatically, but then immediately regrets it. "I didn't mean-"
"I don't, Tifa-" he's at a loss for words because the situation has thrown him, and suddenly he knows that yes, in a less restrained part of his mind he's wondering why Tifa wouldn't give the ribbon to him.
And Tifa sees this realization all over his face.
He can only describe her counter look as a series of contortions that simultaneously show her disgust, pain, and something else he can't pinpoint but makes him uneasy. She laughs, and it sounds conspicuously close to a sob.
"You would." She puts a hand to her eyes. "Oh, God. I can't beleive I-" she kicks a box and it does a pathetic slide towards him. He's never seen her this way. "Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?" she finally shouts, shaking her head, hair flying everywhere.
He is still.
"I loved her Tifa." He looks around the place, feeling as if he'd had this conversation silently with her many times before. "I don't think I should apologize for that." he says, jaw clenching.
Tifa stopped and looked at him.
"No, and I wouldn't want you to." The coffee is still in her hands. "But if you ever once looked outside of yourself, you'd know that we all love her."
He knows he doesn't have to differentiate the types of loves that exist to make her know that his love was beyond what Tifa and Barrett and everyone shared for the flowergirl.
But then Cloud does look. He really looks. At the ribbon in his hand, the pain in Tifa's eyes, and he thinks of the all the cream she started putting in her coffee a couple years back. Every morning, when he went to go lie in the flowers.
"I loved her too Cloud."
And he knew that his and Tifa's love weren't really different at all. He can only stare.
"I didn't tell you because I figured it would only make things worse."
Cloud went forward, took her coffee and put down upon a box. He took her face into his hands.
"Did she know?" he asked, and Tifa shook her head.
"I couldn't, not then. I always felt she'd have to go, and I-didn't want to lose anyone else." Tifa smiled one of those fast fading smiles. "Besides, she only wanted you. That was something I could understand."
Cloud looked into her eyes, didn't trust himself to say anything.
"You always smell like her, like the flowers." she said. And Cloud touched her cool cheek. Ducked his head down and kissed her. And their kiss was too everything, too fragrant with flowers and cream, too tender and all too wrong.
But he let Tifa kiss him harder for it, clench the tattered bit of ribbon hanging from his fist. He felt her searching like him, dying like him, tasting the ghost on his lips.