I was panting like a dog. The very air hissing dreadfully from my flared nostrils seemed to burn like flame, so that it felt like my lungs were a kiln set to max temp. Aside from my head, all my muscles hurt; even my wrists hurt as they pulled along the long, narrow red-bandaged handle. My boots were chafing, the gloves sticky… and my knit top was drenched in sweat. Along with my panting was the sound of the scraping of metal and a howling. The howling of the desert.

My sword's tip trailed behind me, forming a white line in the sand.

All these alien forms in front of me—these high canyons of red rock, the tufts of dead grass and cracked and gravelly ground; this wasteland—were completely and totally unfamiliar to me. Save for one.

The plate, its shadow, and its crowning jewel: ShinRa Corp's HQ. Sitting at the tippy top were my bosses.

That's right. I'm a Class First SOLDIER.

So what am I doing out here in the desert?

I stopped and breathed as deeply as I could for an infinitely-long moment before wiping my brow.

Why was there blood on my face when I hadn't even been bleeding?

I looked up at the glaring sun that was attempting to burn me to cinders. Instantly blinded, I winked my eyes shut.

My heart beats like a hammer.

"Cloud?"

Who…?

"You fell asleep again, didn't you?"

Whose voice…?

"I'm betting a hundred gil that you haven't slept in… let's ballpark it—"

I remember now.

"—Thirty hours?"

Tifa.

"You owe me a hundred," I croaked.

"Shoot! How long?" she asked, which prompted some quick calculations.

"Less than twenty…probably. I'm just tired."

"Oh. Marlene said so this morning, so I guess she was right."

"Like always."

Tifa laughed quietly at my statement. The shadow of the ceiling fan was rotating slowly on the table where I sat, with a world map and my favoured stubby pencil. It was the fact I'd been staring at the fan that had led me to this situation, with Tifa leaning towards me and eyeing my face. She was probably going to comment on something like eyebags or wrinkles.

I sighed, rubbing my eyes.

"You know, your eyes are all purple underneath."

Eyebags it is. The only response produced from my throat ended up being a grunt.

Her micro-scanning eyes still trained on me, she set her right hand on her hip, the dishrag dangling from her soapy hands (I heard the tap still running in the corner of the bar) and imitated me,

" 'Hngh?' What do you mean, 'hngh'?"

Did she have to be like this…?

"I meant, 'I was training the other day, so I slept in yesterday.' Honest. Don't worry about me. There's the bar to look after."

Defeated, she sighed, her sneakers making a dull thud all the way back behind the counter. There obviously was no use for it anymore, so I set the pencil down. I'd probably only been asleep for fifteen minutes. Without customers, the bar was unusually empty, dead.

I watched Tifa's back for a while as her arms scrubbed the dishes clean from our lunch.

Her hair shone from the midday sun streaming in through the side windows. She never tied it at the ends anymore. Her hair was longer now, for all the years she'd spent in Edge, but sometimes I still expected to see a dolphin tail on her back. Marlene, she had cut her braid off just the other day. Denzel, on the other hand, hadn't changed his hair at all. He was getting to be as tall as me but he still looked like that same kid I'd picked up at the slums. He was out with friends. Leaving the two of us alone here.

A yawn escaped me. It really is dead…. Dinner rush won't be too good. Maybe a dozen people'll come… Nah, half a dozen…. We might need to ask for those tabs soon. How many have we wracked up? One, two dozen over three years? We want just a third of that. Or half, even. Half of three dozen… A dozen and a half. Half a dozen?

Half of six… No—

Six and…

Then suddenly the wind of the wasteland was howling in my ears again, my chest burning from the red-hot stone that was my heart. My heart, beating wildly.

Oh, God.

God, I need to get out of here. It's too hot. I'm so tired. Where am I? What am I doing…?

I blink, and a pair of dark eyes are blinking back at me. The light hides most of their face, framed by a curtain of shining black.

Tifa is smiling.

A grip on my hand. Hers. Its softness is cooling on my skin. Her mouth moves. And the sound of her voice drifts towards me like a weak echo:

"You'll be okay. Trust me."

The next thing I knew, I was awake in bed. It was dark. Not to mention quiet. Nighttime.

I could hear the hand of our mechanical clock ticking and my slow breathing. Slowly the shadows appeared, so that I could see Tifa resting on the bed that was next to mine.

The dream was still stuck in my head.

It wasn't surprising that I saw her in that dream. I had been talking with her before I nodded off, after all. 'But,' I hear a voice in the depths of my mind speak, 'You know there's another reason. She's always been there.'

That's right. I reasoned to myself. She was always there: growing up, living with Mom, but still lonely; in Midgar, where I never truly understood my instructions and followed along; that day, when I thought that everything I had to live for was already in flames; and that first time, though not quite the first time that mako claimed my consciousness, turning me into nothing but an empty, wheelchaired shell….

I don't know what godforsaken corner of the Earth I'd be stuck in without Tifa Lockhart.

So it's unexplainable how I can't bring myself to….

No. There was an explanation.

Another girl had once called out to me in my dreams, 'You came for me. That's all that matters.'

What about the fact that I needed you, as much as I'd been used to needing Tifa? What about the way I can't forget that I just wanted, so many times, to lean back into your arms and stay there in front of a bonfire? To rest? What about this guilt I'm feeling for even wanting to forget all that? Does that matter, too?

I punched at my pillow and turned, tossed, and turned some more.

Stop thinking! Just stop thinking!

…

Her eyes used to be a beautiful green.

Dammit, didn't I say to stop thinking—

I sighed bitterly. There wasn't a point to any of this. I decided to let go, and my mind drifted.

Aerith was a full year older than me but with her round face, she still looked a lot like the innocent child she was. Her lips were small but full, and her nose turned up a little at the end. Thinking of how the world, after our escapades, would surely become better would call up this smile that made the lights dance in her eyes…. A blinding kind of look.

She was looking at me with that face right before she—

Now my body felt all hollowed out.

Suddenly I heard a creaking from nearby, then the light sound of footfalls.

Tifa had gotten up and was probably heading towards the washroom. This was customary: she got up in the night and tried to reach her destination as quietly as she could, but would end up waking me anyway. My custom was to pretend I was asleep. There was a smooth rise and fall to the chest when you were asleep and a special way to breathe that was easy to mimic. So I closed my eyes. I breathed loosely, as though I were still dreaming (please, no more dreams).

Suddenly the sound of her footsteps diminished. Then after a few seconds, they were approaching me, and the sound disappeared again. The clock kept ticking noisily. Was she watching?

This was the first time she'd actually come up to me and leaned in, thinking I was sleeping. Her breath was warm on my face. The seconds crept by.

Until she pressed a finger right between my eyebrows—the one spot she knew that I flinched at. My mouth made an involuntary twitch. Aside from my heart's senselessly-loud pounding, I heard her giggle faintly.

I was about to open my mouth when she made for the hallway again, stalking quietly away. "Should be right back," she whispered into the dark.

I waited until I felt her presence in the room again.

"You knew I was up," I said.

"You were knocked out at one o'clock, and it's almost ten," she replied, "It doesn't take much, you know."

"I see."

"Cloud," she said, almost inaudibly, "you're going to burn out at this rate…. I'm scared. You don't take care of yours—"

"I have to protect you guys. So…don't worry. Honest."

"I believe you," she said, and she got back into bed.

…With me; that was the surprising part. Moving aside, I protested weakly, "O-oi…." She was shuffling the covers up towards her neck, and then her eyes pierced through the dark into mine.

"I need to hear you say it," she whispered, "Even though I know you already feel that way. 'You're my family.' Just say it. Is that so hard to ask? Cloud?" I turned my back to her. Can't pretend to be asleep now. She continued to speak. " 'I'm happy, because I rely on you.' That's all. At first I was scared, too, but that was at first. Midgar's a pile of rust now…. But Edge is already alive and well! We're transforming everything. And I feel like we've really settled well… but I don't know what you're thinking, Cloud. Please, tell me. 'I love you.' "

My eyes widened, even though there was nothing to see. I couldn't tell whether she was prodding me to say it or saying it herself. If it was the latter….

But if it was the former, that'd be a bind, too. I can't just smile and say that. There's something lingering. It feels like it's pulling me back.

Green eyes.

"Tifa, I…" I managed, "You're right."

"So I'm right?" she asked, "You like it with us, Denzel and Marlene? And with me? …But you can't bring yourself to really love us like we're a family. Even though you feel it."

More silence.

"I'm right about that, too…huh?"

"Tifa—"

"So I'm right?"

"—Please…."

"I am, aren't I?"

"What about her? Would she want it? Want me to be 'happy'!?" My voice had risen. Tifa's was silenced instantly.

"That's what I keep thinking. I know, though: of course she'd want me to be happy, really happy." I couldn't see her face, but she seemed shocked.

It was welling up in my chest, that feeling of being swallowed.

And then she spoke.

" 'Be happy. Remember me, talk about me, even though you'll be sad to, but don't give up.' She never gave up on us, Cloud. She helped us that day, and she helped everyone with the Stigma not too long ago, too. Why?

"Aerith loved us enough to save us, but enough to let us go when it came down to it, too. Heh. Almost like some mom."

It welled up in my chest again, stronger. 'Like a mother.' Like the one I had lost a long time ago in the fire. Like another one from which I thought I now had grown independent. Like one I really didn't want to let go of.

"So…Cloud…?" Tifa said, her voice lighter than the moonlight coming in.

But I had to face it.

Reluctantly I turned towards the woman lying next to me.

And all of a sudden, there was the face of my dreams in front of me. Shadowed, but the same.

"Tifa…" I said, "I don't like talking about this kind of…stuff."

"Uh-huh. But still..."

"I don't like looking at you in the eye."

"…Still…."

"I don't like your eyes, or your smile… or your nose or hair or your hands and your body."

"Er…" she said. Those kind green eyes looked happy as they closed, slowly.

"I don't like how you cry when you see a good play or how you can drag Denzel across the room by his ear when he's sweet-talking a girl or how you hugged Marlene when Barrett left, saying he wasn't coming back for a long time, and made her sad."

"Wh—!"

"—The only reason I don't like all that is because it takes away my self-control."

"So th—"

"That's how it is."

"SO SAY IT!"

"…I don't want to."

Roaring, she dug her knuckles between my brows. Twitching in pain, my mouth would eventually come to form a smile.

My lips rose slightly at their corners. And then they said what I couldn't with words.

Sorry, but she's just so goddamned beautiful.

EDIT: updated 9th of January '14 for more nice goodness. Thank you to Scuzzya for addressing a typo earlier too! Have a good one, all!