Bleeding Hands
Summary: Tifa had hated for so long, she wasn't sure if she was capable of anything else. But… he was just a child… contempt would have to do. Or: Tifa finds herself de-aged and trapped as an experiment twenty-some-odd years too soon. Time Travel Fic. Slooow Romance.
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. Any of them.
Tifa didn't know the whole story.
Not really.
She hadn't needed to, not then. Not when the bitter taste of vengeance lingered wantonly on her tongue, when salted frustration and fear wet her pillow (or jacket, or pack, or dry, sun-parched earth). When her suffering and grief were absolute. There was no time for understanding. Not when the world was being throttled in the bloodstained hands of a madman (that just. Wouldn't. DIE.), and a giant Meteor was waiting to engulf the Planet in flames.
It had been enough to have her friends by her side.
But now…
…now things were different.
Cloud knew. He was at the center of it all, maybe not from the very beginning, but there at the end just the same. And though she wasn't one to pry, she had hoped…
But it had been a false hope. Before, maybe. But not now.
Still, Tifia had enough intuition to pick up on some things.
She knew that the Planet was alive, that the Lifestream fed and was fed by everything. She knew that it had been dying, that Shinra had seen, and then over looked this fact. She knew that the energy company had had its fingers seeped deep into many festering pies, one of which was the experimentation and exploitation of human beings. That the Silver General, (she WILL NOT speak his name) was the product of this venture, and that somewhere along the line, he cracked and went insane.
She knew that there had been a boy named Zack.
She knew that Vincent, the quiet, solemn faced man draped in red, was somehow connected, intimately, with all this.
She knew that Aerith had been special, and not just because she was the last of the Cetra.
She knew that Jenova, Calamity, and Alien, were synonymous.
And she knew that for a time there, Cloud had been a broken, fractured mind, a split person, barely tethered to reality.
She knew this, but there was so much more between the lines that she didn't have the means see.
Perhaps that is why she came here, to the beginning of her story.
She'd followed it back, a slow, winding pilgrimage through the lands and, in a way, though the years. She'd left the bar in Barret's capable hand, letting the children stay, consumed in their little projects and games. And then…
She went home.
She walked the familiar path, saw the familiar houses. The faces were different, though, a years-long cover up by Shinra, yet to be unraveled. Still, she stood meters from her porch, stared at the blackened remains of the old mansion, walked its brittle floors and breathed in its ash. She remembers fire, scorching her skin, hot and dry in her mouth, and blood, her father's blood, dripping to stain wood. She remembers silver and a laugh, deep, raw; unhinged.
She remembers the pain. The easy way in which he disarmed her, the sharp sting of the sword. And his eyes… those horrible glowing eyes.
She carefully walks the corridor to the decrepit reactor, watchfully stepping down the creaking, winding stairs, past the empty rooms filled with empty, hollow screams. Shadows lurk in the labs and around the bookcases in the blackened library; she cuts them down, beating them back with fists and a kind of heart-breaking fury.
She drifts past the secret room that was once the resting place of a broken man, the cleverly disguised door ajar. Her eyes never linger, too afraid to look inside and desecrate what nearly feels like hallowed ground.
Then she is in the reactor, with its pipes and measuring stations, the broken machines covered with filth and snow. She sees the observation window, the blackness that was once filled with a vibrant, sickly yellow. The overlook walkway is still intact, stubbornly clinging to warped metal, despite the horrendous explosion that had taken place. She steps out into the open air, the chill mountain breeze nearly blowing her away. Her dark hair whips around her face as she balances, hands white knuckled on one of the sole remaining safety rails.
Then she looks down, down, down. Down at the blackness that once waved with hazy green smoke, stinging to the eyes and acid to the lungs.
And she sees nothing.
A sigh escapes her, the sound like a release.
She is done.
It is time to move on.
She makes to walk away from the scene of her ruined life, but then… something deep below catches her eye. She angles closer, bending over the rail, rust red eyes squinting.
There is a light in the depths, shining clear as day in the darkness beneath her.
She leans-
-and metal snaps, her balance wavers, and the world tilts as she falls. Her hands grasp for something, anything, with which to save herself, but the air is empty, just like every memory she'd walked through. She takes a breath to scream, panic choking her, thoughts little but berating regrets, and then, like the last few years of her life-
-there is nothing.
"What is it?"
"We don't know. This tank was supposed to be empty."
"Is it another experiment? A new kind of species?"
"I- its floating in mako. It shouldn't be alive without a surrogate."
"It looks human, but then, every fetus looks the same at this stage in development."
"Oh? How far along do you figure?"
"Month and a half, two."
"…"
"What?"
"It wasn't there yesterday."
"…I'll get the Professor."
Tifa was surrounded by warm green.
How she knew her name was Tifa and that she was a "she" hardly registered, not in the bright green of the haze she was experiencing.
Everything ached. But it was a familiar ache, the kind she hadn't felt since childhood. Growing pains. Deep boned and twisting, they ran up her spine, down her limbs and over her head. It hurt, but she couldn't open her eyes to see, couldn't move. Her jaw wouldn't unlock, her lips pressed flat over her throbbing mouth. She tried to flex, tried to feel for injuries from the fall -she had fallen, hadn't she?- but to no avail. All the straining exhausted her, so she did what her mind dully warned her not to do. She fell asleep.
When she wakes, it is to a world both familiar, and different from what she knew.