I wrote this one in response to a lot of the flak Tifa gets for apparently 'lying' to Cloud over the course of the game. I've never got that impression myself.

Didn't Know, Couldn't Tell

Something was wrong, wasn't it? Standing there in that room in Kalm, listening to him talk she was sure that something must be wrong, but still...

Was it really?

He sounded so sure, so confident in his own words. What he was saying sounded right, but there was something out of place. Him. Was he there? Did she remember him being there?

Then again, did she really remember anything?

Something about a photograph, a bridge, someone clinging to her hand as they fell...

So she stood there, unconsciously chewing her lip and frowning slightly at the story. She asked a few questions and he answered them easily. There was no real reason to doubt him, and yet...

Fire, screaming, a crumpled body on the reactor floor, voices in the background, someone calling her, a flash of steel, white pain, and nothing...

She let it pass. She couldn't even say what she was thought was so wrong. Everything he was saying made sense; she had no reason to disagree when her own memories were so indistinct. And so they moved on, on to Junon, the New Continent, Corel and Cosmo Canyon. And she watched him the whole way. Unsure, uneasy.

What was wrong?

Bright light hurting her eyes, doctors, bandages, "whole town destroyed they said, no other survivors," how did she get here...?

And then they reached Nibelheim, and everything was wrong. Too many things there that shouldn't be, and as he argued with the people, everything he was saying still seemed wrong and right all at once.

Was it really him...?

She couldn't ask the questions. There were too many, and none of them seemed to make sense. What little she could remember made sense in his story. There was no reason to ask. But was this really him? What little childhood they had spent together did not seem to translate into this man in front of her.

Something else didn't fit. Perhaps it wasn't the story that was wrong at all.

Who else was there?

But she wouldn't ask those questions. She would never ask those questions. He was all she had left from the time she couldn't remember. The only thing in that new Nibelheim that had felt right, even when he felt wrong. How she could ask, if asking meant that she might lose that one remaining thing?

Why didn't she try to talk to him on his own? Surely she would have...?

And then Mideel. Mideel had made her feel sick. Sitting staring into those unfocused eyes for hours at a time and feeling sick to her stomach because somehow this had to have been her fault. Maybe, if she had asked even just one of those questions, she could have saved him from this, because maybe she had been right. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it should have been someone else.

But a 'maybe' wouldn't have been enough to save him. She was sure.

And how she hated to be right.

She found him broken into pieces; found out that she had been right. Something had been wrong, but even worse, most of it had been right. Their memories fell into place side by side, and she remembered everything. Except that she still didn't remember him.

But he had been there. He had come for her.

That was all that mattered.

And now when she was with him, none of it mattered. It didn't matter that they had never been close when they were young, didn't matter that he had never reached his dream, or that he'd hidden from her in his shame when he'd returned. It didn't matter that she'd never shared her doubts with him when he'd first told the story, even though she had felt guilty at first. He had told her not to.

Because how was she supposed to tell him what she didn't know herself?

I'd appreciate some critique on this. Please review :)