Never Giving Up
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Just trying to see things in a different light. I love Tifa, honest, this is just one of the ways I could see her and Cloud. C&C is welcome! Flames will be ignored.
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It could have been the family motto: Never Give Up. The words were practically tattooed on her soul. Most folk would agree Tifa Lockheart was no quitter.
More would agree she wouldn't know when to quit if it hit her in the face. She wouldn't know how to.
The motto had to be Never Give Up. It couldn't be Fight to the End or even Til Death or some other set of words implying a finite time. Never give up no matter what the odds, hang on far past the time when sane people would cut their losses and run. It was her greatest strength.
Her life was an easy illustration of how strong her determination, how powerful her inner drive. It had worked in her favor. Tifa had not only survived the Nibelheim disaster, she had managed to move on. Owning Seventh Heaven hadn't been easy, especially for a girl with no family and no resources. She had even had the courage to join a militant anti-ShinRa group: AVALANCHE. Risked all to let them use her bar as a base.
It had been her stubborn refusal to bend that had kept Cloud with them at first, her belief in his word a more potent force than any monetary anchor.
Dragging Cloud back from the Lifestream was an even greater testament. It had been her will alone which drove her, a bastion strong enough to withstand even the confusing might of mako.
Tifa had even faced down death, freeing herself in the gas chamber instead of allowing herself to be consumed by despair.
No, no one would call Tifa Lockheart a quitter.
But her stubbornness was also her greatest weakness. It blinded her from being able to obtain what she wanted the most. A nice house, white picket fence, two point five children, and her hero, Cloud, always there to protect her.
The trouble was the one she had picked to be her hero. He fled. Time and time again he fled. To ShinRa, to SOLDIER, to Aeris, to his deliveries. Yet he never fled to her.
The thought would never cross her mind that someone who had been failed by those he saw as strongest, heroes in their own right – his heroes, and who knew failure well would cringe at the thought of being someone's "hero." Cloud had seen the mighty fall, had seen how he himself could be too late, and knew better than any how heroes did not truly exist. Their fall was inevitable, harder for all their greatness.
But her indomitable will had never failed her before. So she kept pushing, kept fighting. Kept believing he was the hero she thought he was, not knowing he no longer wanted to be one. He wanted to be acknowledged for what he was, a survivor.
Faced with her will and her belief, Cloud Strife wasn't stupid. He knew a battle he couldn't win. So he stayed for as long as he could stand and then he left, ran free for a time before returning. Knowing if he left too long she would come after him. But he would never stay.
Thus the vicious cycle would continue, their friends watching the rat race that was too grim for a comedy and yet too silly for a tragedy. Each one knowing nothing short of death, and perhaps not even that, would allow them to be free of it. None were sure if they should laugh or cry, to choose a side or to remain neutral. All were thankful Cloud had enough sense to stay, even if the intervals were short, for then they would not have to choose. It was common knowledge among the group that none would be able to anyway.
End