Well since my last Clotif story was quiet a success I will try another one. My recent project is just a little too hard to continue at the moment. Let's see wheter you'll like this.

Note: This fic is mainly from Cloud's POV unless stated otherwise.

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Love Per Email

Prologue

Since ever my father died in a horrible car accident, my mother decided to move back into her hometown in Australia – far away from any civilization, in the middle of nowhere. But I liked it here a lot, to be back in the town where I grew up, even if had just been for a year. You know the people around you closely and there isn't always this noise surrounding you.

Mum had left all her friends behind when she married Dad and moved further up North.

Now we were back here and we enjoyed life. Though things were quiet hard still, considering my dad had only died like two years ago, mum had a new job in a takw-away-restaurant.

And of all these many things that had changed, one thing didn't – my mother's overprotection. Since ever she believed I had hit the sensitive age of puberty, she was weirder than ever. She wouldn't let me go out with friends she didn't know and she wanted me to be a good student with only A's and B's. But I managed to change her views on both of these matters. Now that we were back in the smoky environment my mother wanted to flee from when she had found out she was pregnant with me, her attitude had changed once again. She was like a teen again, though I am the teen in this house. Having turned 17 just two weeks ago, I was able to take responsibility. And it's good I can. As often as my mother would throw me out into the cold reality, just to get me back into Mother's Home, she had finally dropped the overprotection.

Randomly friends of hers would sleep over at our place. This house felt like a Hotel already. While mum had gotten away from this bad environment and had grown into an elegant woman, being 38 years of age, her friends were dragging her back into what she used to be like. People say that as you age you change and you can never be like a teen again without embarassing yourself, my mother managed quiet well to be one again much to my dismay. But she could be the grown up I was looking up to still when needed to. Like when her friend Lindsay had seriously attempted to sleep with me. Drug-addict – is what you would most likely read in her life-report. And even though mum would trust in me, she did also take into consideration that I would have been stupid enough to agree to her friend's stupid suggestion. Yet another problem I had with my mum, she wouldn't fully trust me.

Either mum's friends were now drug addicted or smoking like mad. And some would just drink a lot of alcohol. Some stumbeled into our house drunken already, some came here just to get themselves drunken. There was one room in this house that smelt just like a pub, the room where they slept in. But mum valued her friends. "As bad as they might be, they are my friends." I often heard her say. Might be right. I wouldn't know, I was never a person to make friends easily. Moving here might give me a new chance to find new friends. In our old hometown they were all pretty much snobs. We fought hard for our money, while they were lucky enough to have a lot of money to begin with. I wasn't popular, I was just the quiet guy sitting in the corner hoping for the school to end soon. I was introverted so to say. Hence why when roaming through the mail, one of these advertisements caught my attention. "Children of the World."

Usually my mother would throw away anything that wore a slogan like this. She always believed that it was just another one of these organizations that wanted you to donate money for kids in poor countries, yet this money would never reach them. I couldn't argue her point, she was right, but that's not what this organization was about. There was a list of email adresses from all over the world, people you could contact. Something like an organization to make online friends. Having no friends at all, I fancied that option. My self-confidence wasn't the highest and I didn't quiet like my looks or anything about me, so I welcomed this anonymity a lot.

Roaming through this huge list, I copied those that were actually english-talking people. I had no knowledge in any other language, so there were a few countries I could write onto that list. Having always had some interest in England, or Great Britain as they call it, I searched through this fairly huge list. And eventually I came across a name that appealed to me – Tifa Lockheart. I liked the sound of this name and I did write her an email.

It didn't take more than a day for her to reply. Since ever then these three words got my most favourite. "You Have Mail."

Mum was actually happy I would spend time in my room – though I was sure she had always wondered what I was up to – she felt like I was safe. Her friend Mary had once again slept over at our place again. She was here for one week already. Mum believes her husband beat her up, though I believe she ran into something drunken as she was when she knocked onto our door. But Mary kept my mother busy enough so she wouldn't inquire about my private life. This online friendship was meant to be a secret for as long as possible.

I had told her all these things. And she trusted me in return. Maybe not as much as me, but she believed that her life was just boring while mine interested her a lot. She was wrong, but yeah, try to tell that a woman. I figured it was impossible.

Checking emails every morning and afternoon and whenever I had access to a computer had gotten my routine. A routine I loved.

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Well, that's just the prologue. I hope you like it. Next chapter might come soon, playing three years later. ;)