Visions
Summary: Sometimes, Tifa wonders whether she should be jealous or not. OneShot.
Set: Pre-FFVII AC
Tifa always knew.
She could see it in the way his gaze became distant and unfocused and he stared into seemingly nothing for seconds, sometimes even minutes.
He was seeing her again, probably talking to her as well.
Sometimes Tifa wondered whether she should be jealous. Or maybe she already was jealous?
It was a seriously stupid thing: Being in love with someone who was in love with someone who was dead. And being jealous of a dead person was even more stupid. But she couldn't help herself.
What made it even worse was that she loved Aerith, too. It hadn't been the kind of love she felt for Cloud ever since they had met as children. It was the love she felt for the dead woman as her best friend, as someone who was truly important to her and whom she truly wanted to be happy. As long as Aerith had been alive, Tifa had struggled with her conscience: She loved Cloud, yes, but he loved Aerith and Tifa was quite sure she loved him, too. So wasn't it better to make two people happy and be the unhappy one instead of being happy but making two people unhappy in the process? She would gladly have stepped back if there had been any way Cloud and Aerith would have been able to built a future together.
But Aerith didn't have the decency to survive in order to be able to see the future she had created and to share it with them, and Tifa was left with the person she loved most and who was grieving for the lost person he loved most.
She grieved, too.
But deep down inside, she knew, she was almost glad it had turned out like that. She felt bad for feeling like that, immediately regretted it and still couldn't help herself. She loved Aerith. She grieved for her; she missed her, the beautiful, determined girl who had sold flowers on the streets of Midgar. Who had been their travel companion, their healer, who had helped them to defeat Shinra and who had sacrificed her life so their world could be a better place. So their world was able to create a new future. And yet, she was strangely happy Aerith was dead.
She detested herself.
Every time she saw Cloud having visions of Aerith, jealousy and hate – jealousy of Aerith, hate of herself – seethed inside of her. The smile on his face when he saw her was tender and loving, so different from the rare smiles he gave her.
On moments like those, she wanted to hit him, to force him to close his eyes. She wanted to hurt him and kiss him and make him forget the visions of the dead girl he loved so much. By whatever means possible to her.
But she never did.
She watched him smile and talk to Aerith and when the visions subsided, she watched him slump down somewhere, either attempting to get drunk or just staring into nothingness. Ignoring her and everyone else. After some time, if he wasn't drunk yet, he would get up and leave without a glance backward. And she knew he was racing along the streets and highways on his motor bike, trying to forget, trying to leave behind. Trying to leave them behind, Marlene and Denzel, trying to leave behind her.
Sometimes, she hated him.
Sometimes, she wondered whether what Aerith did was sensible – making Cloud cling to visions wasn't kind, wasn't what she'd have done if she had been in her place.
Sometimes, she hated Aerith, as well. Aerith, of all, should have known he couldn't hide from reality forever.
But most of the time, she just hated herself.
Still, she waited for Cloud to come home late at night. She left him his dinner on the table when he came home late. She treated his injuries and watched over him and she yelled at him when he needed someone to bring him back to reality.
Whether it was enough, she couldn't say.