Aerith was gone: dead at his hands. Tifa had always wanted to believe that somehow, some way, she watched over them. Not today.

Aerith deserved better than that.

The dawn light cast black shadows across the wooden floor and walls of Seventh Heaven, creating an eerie landscape of her own bar. Gone was the calming, centering place. Not now in the lucid half-light. She seemed in an altogether different world from which she woke into alone, upstairs.

And then there was his presence.

She had not seen his silhouette or heard him enter. Only silver hair splayed across her shoulder and the brush of hot, black leather against her bared skin revealed him. He breathed against the back of her neck and the air from his lungs' unexpected cool sent goosepimples down her spine and up her arms to her wrists; clenched together by only his left hand.

She struggled against his steely grip. Her heart raced. She never appreciated his incredible strength. Not until now.

His voice startled her in its smoothness. "Hello Ms. Lockhart."

The voice sent a jolt through her heart. It evoked ancient emotions and wounds, thought long-passed, but suddenly fresh. "Sephiroth?"

"I have missed seeing you, you precious thing."

Tifa shrugged backwards against his form, slender and lean; a stack of granite-hard muscle. She jerked her arms to pull them away; to have anything with which she could fight. He clenched tighter. He was immovable and he had disabled her best weapon.

She tried to turn to him. He pressed down against her; her face flush to the bar. Something stirred against her outer thigh. She hoped it was his hand. When he brushed his fingertips across her back, through the thin fabric of her tank top, she realized it was not.

Her heart raced with every fleeting touch from fleshy fingertips and black leather. "What are you doing here?"

He whispered into her ear. "I wanted to try you."

Her heart skipped and raced. The jolt of his voice evoked intense feeling that coalesced into a knot in her abdomen.

Fleshy fingertips brushed up her black miniskirt, swirling across the bumps of her weathered, flushed skin. They slithered across the crease between her legs; felt it through thin fabric.

Tifa inhaled. "Stop or I'll scream."

His tongue traced a path across her earlobe. "Believe me, Ms. Lockhart. I would love nothing more than to make you scream."

Each wriggle against his grip pressed him deeper against her; into her. And then he moved the fabric.

Tifa gasped. It was as though he were reaching towards the knot in her abdomen. The jolt through her body intensified. She closed her legs, but that only clutched him within her. The ease with which he explored her suggested the emotions and wounds his voice and touch evoked had other effects.

"To think I could do this to you," he said. "You're a naughty girl."

She opened her mouth to protest, but what was there to protest? He knew exactly how to touch her, and his touch made electricity surge through her extremities.

He withdrew from her. She tried to shift up and away from the bar, but he increased the tension on her arms, holding her down. His right hand grasped her panties. She widened the span of her legs, struggled to keep them on. He pulled harder. They ripped and floated to the floor. Tifa felt the cool air of the bar in the early morning against her moistness.

He braced her waist. "This belt you wear. So loose. It is useless." She knew he was smirking. "I think I have thought of a use for it…"

He released her hands only to catch them again roughly and yank them behind her back. Her belt was undone in seconds. It latched across her skin; bound her at her wrists.

"Stop," she whimpered. "Please…"

He pressed his body against hers. Through the smooth leather of his pants she felt his intent. And then he lifted her—hoisted her, onto her side across the bar. Wisps of silver hair dangled across her face. She could see his familiar face now—his familiar smirk. His arms coiled around her thighs, prying her open; exposing her.

"What are you going to do to me?" She whispered.

"Only give you a kiss…"

He slid her waist across the bar and brought her to his lips. His tongue parted her.

She struggled against her own belt, grasping at nothing, scratching against the flat, smooth wood of the bar. With only her shoulders and sore elbows grounded, the blood rushed to her head. He had complete control over her mobility. Even her voice was no longer her own. The swirling of his serpentine tongue rendered her breathless. The knot within her tightened and clenched until tingling warmth spread across her body. She tried to scream, but it only came out as a stifled gasp.

He released her hips and she tumbled to her side, panting, flushed from head to toe. She watched him, quivering and bound in a puddle of moisture.

"You, my dear, are a delicacy."

He lifted her tank top to her collar bone. Her voluptuous breasts fell free, their tips narrowing to points.

"You have the most perfect breasts in the world, Tifa…" His voice drifted into a loving lilt.

Tifa flashed him a puzzled look.

His expression blanked. "You are a delicious catch, Ms. Lockhart." He drew her legs open again and met no resistance from her jelly-like muscles.

"What are you going to do to me now?" she whispered.

"I will find enjoyment with you." He opened the leather of his pants and fell free. She could not see, but she was aware of his warmth near her, against her, and then inside of her.

Tifa looked away from him, distracted by the light of the rising sun through the windows. Birds chirped outside. The inhale and exhale of her breath coincided with his thrust and draw. Only in that moment, did she appreciate the unreality of the morning. The guilt over her climax was real enough, but so was her pleasure. Her fear was real as well. More real than she thought it would be.

She loved Cloud dearly. Of that there could be doubt. But after the newness of their relationship and lovemaking faded, she grasped his inability to fix her broken heart; for she was a broken person. They both were. She had known so much pain in her life. So much anger. So much fear.

He destroyed her village. He killed her father. He murdered her best friend. When she remembered, she became a quivering ball of rage with a stomach-churning knot in the pit of her soul. She had only ever been able to untangle it with Cloud's help.

Then she learned the anger and fear excited her; aroused her. To be evoked and extinguished made her feel complete. Only in the face of death did she feel so alive.

Her heart belonged to Cloud to be sure, but in place of his soft, gentle heart, she sometimes yearned for strength and resolve. She needed someone who would not ask for her, but take her: take her in a raw animalistic act, spread across the Seventh Heaven bar in the diminutive light of dawn.

"You'll never get away with this," Tifa said.

"And who will you tell, Miss Lockhart? Who will you tell that you allowed me to come so close? That you barely struggled? That you allowed me to take you and release inside of you?"

The knot in her loins untangled into one of the most intense orgasms in her entire life.


Tifa still quivered as she fastened the buckle across her waist. The form behind her stirred.

"Sorry about the panties," he said. "I got carried away."

Tifa turned. The silver hair was bundled between his arms. She smiled a shaky smile. "It's okay, Cloud. That was…" There were no words.

His eyes were wide from disbelief in his own actions. He was a kind man: kind enough never to question the mysteries of her sexuality. Almost never. "Did you really want to do that again sometime?"

Tifa's burgundy eyes flashed. "I guess we should pick up Denzel and Marlene from Elmyra's place soon. Elmyra asked me the other day when we'd be returning Aerith's pink dress…"

Cloud's eyes widened more. He blushed. "You got me there."

Tifa laughed.

"Maybe we should return it soon," Cloud said. "You know… it's only eight. And we told Elmyra it would be noon…"

Tifa's eyes lowered to the taught, stretched black leather of the costume's pants. "What…? You want me to wear her dress again right now?"

Cloud put the wig back on and smirked. It was so much like one of his smirks.

Tifa wondered if somewhere in the Lifestream he was watching. And she hoped more than ever she was not.


A/N: Happy Halloween! ^_^