A/N: Hi there. Well here I go trying again. This is a two part piece, I decided to post the first part now so that I could get myself motivated and focus on one thing at a time. Still baby steps, working my way there. I promise the second part shall come very very soon. I'm not planning on allowing anymore long delays from my insecurities. Thanks so much to everyone for their support. This idea was spurned from my forum lurking where I learned that they considered a scene after the lifestream event in which Tifa performs CPR on Cloud. Can't remember if this was in an interview or one of the ultimanias or the reunion files. If anyone knows, lemme know and I'll fix this. =) Anyway no doubt it was just another little mini game with button sequences. But I found the thought endearing nonetheless. More angsty and drawn out than it would have been in the game. But what can I say? I'm a sucker for angsty and drawn out. As I said this is two part, because I got wordy and there's a flashback sequence so I figured I would split it. Thanks for reading, comments are indeed most welcome. I have gotten miles behind on my reviewing and I sincerely apologize, I'm going to catch things though up I swear! I have been in a permanent lag lately. Anyway enough of my babbling.....
Characters not mine. Copyright Square-Enix and all that jazz. Timeline takes place after Mideel and the lifestream sequence.
Rated M for language and violence.
Surfacing
He stared at her through the tendrils of emerald mists with eyes that she finally, finally recognized. And it was all she could do to keep the welled up tears from escaping her own. They had worked so hard stitching him together piece by piece. Now the boy she remembered stood before her with his small, shy smile. Jenova had lost her hold. Now the puppet could curl his fist around the strings that held him so tightly and burn them away like whispered embers in the night.
Cloud Strife was free.
"Come on Tifa," he said as he outstretched his hand towards her. "Lets go home."
She smiled as she took his hand and they ascended. The lifestream propelling them upward at an ever increasing speed. The monochromatic world around them swirled away beneath their feet. The voices, the souls were still screaming, flooding her mind with words and images that were not her own. The assault they purged on the senses was maddening. Tortuous wails seared into her psyche, scalding every last nerve until her entire body felt bloodied and raw. It was their way of crying out to the living, to grasp onto them with gnarled fingers until they heard every last word, felt every last pain. It was the roar of the planet consuming the souls it held.
It was only when they hit the liquid barrier did she realize that she had been screaming herself. She choked and struggled as the thick fluid began to fill her lungs. Beneath the panic she realized that the force of the impact had caused their hands to separate. She flailed her arms in a vain attempt to find some part of him to grab on to in the endless green.
She came up empty.
The surface spun above her as she struggled to break through. She thought she could see the stars in the night sky over Nibelheim shimmering in passive indifference to their plight. And despite herself she found that she was still reaching for them. That was when her vision began tunneling, and everything went black.
And oh so thankfully silent.
The next thing Tifa Lockhart became aware of were hands. She could feel them, ghosting their fingers over her skin. Through the darkness she could hear more voices, distant and different from the ones in the lifestream. Screaming, yet familiar. The remedial warmth of magic washed over her as she fought her way back to consciousness. There was a bright flash of light and her eyes snapped open. The first thing to register in her mind was the hot and burning sphere looming above her, setting the sky on fire with brilliant shades of orange and red, eclipsing the normally blue hue of the atmosphere.
Meteor was still closing in on the planet.
Her lungs seized painfully in her chest as they tried to desperately take in air. A strangled gasp escaped her lips before she turned and wretched violently against the earth. The dense ooze poured from her mouth and splattered the ground as she heaved. When the last of it cleared her throat she automatically forced the air in and out of her oxygen starved body with loud, labored breaths. Tifa fell weakly over on her back, fighting to keep her eyes open.
"C'mon now, you can do it," a deep voice boomed above her. She looked feebly for its source before succumbing to violent fits of coughing as more of the lifestream demanded to be freed from her body. She rolled her head to the side to spit the contents on the ground only to meet Barret Wallace's terrified gaze.
"That's it Tifa, get that nasty shit outta you."
"Barret?" she rasped. Her voice sounding hollow and far away.
"I'm here. We're all here," he said softly, placing his large hand on her shoulder. "It's gonna be alright."
"Tifa!!" Someone else wailed her name and she turned to see Yuffie barreling toward her, falling and skidding on her knees to a stop beside her. The young ninja grabbed her hand and clasped it between her own. Her face was streaked red with tears that continued to fall. "Oh thank the gods!"
"Yuffie..." she whispered, flexing her fingers in an attempt to reassure the distraught girl.
"How is he?" Barret's voice wavered
Yuffie didn't speak. She glanced over her shoulder before returning his gaze with a sorrowful look and shook her head. Tifa's hand quaked in her grasp as the girl pulled it to her and broke down in a fit of sobs.
"Who?" the martial artist asked weakly.
She looked back and forth between the two of them but received no answer. They merely stared at her with a mixture of hesitation and horror.
"Who?" Tifa tried again. She didn't like the way they were looking at her. It was the same look that her father gave her that day she came home from school and asked where her mother was...
Oh God.
The blood in her veins suddenly turned to ice as the realization hit her.
"Where's Cloud?" The young woman's voice suddenly more forceful as her eyes rolled around in panic.
"It's okay, Tifa. Cid and Vincent are workin' on him."
His lips moved but she couldn't make out what he was saying . She could barely hear anything now over the loud thrumming of her heart. Each beat sending white hot pain radiating through her skull. The adrenaline was now surging through her body as she wrenched her hand away from Yuffie. She twisted and strained weak muscles until she was on her knees. Her vision spun and she nearly fell backwards. Barret caught her in his arms and tried to steady her swaying form.
"Whoa, hold on now!" He tried to settle her back to the ground. She wouldn't have it though, the urgency in her growing and she fought back against his grasp.
"Take it easy! You're in no shape to be movin' around!" he hollered as she broke free from him. Tifa stumbled and staggered on to her feet. Her body pitching and reeling as she made her way towards the pilot and the ex-turk.
"Tifa! Wait!" Yuffie scrambled after her.
"Cloud!" she cried out, her voice hoarse and raw. The green liquid snaked down the length of her legs, pooling on the sand with each driven step she took. Cid turned upon hearing her voice and quickly rushed to meet her.
"Hang on girl!" He grabbed her by the arm and shook his head. "There's no need to go over there."
She didn't look at him, she didn't even feel his rough hand against her skin. The only recognition she gave was when his strength proved enough to slow her advance. "Let me go."
"Tifa he's..."
She wouldn't let him finish.
"Let...me...go!" Her eyes flashed dangerously at him as she tried to tear away from his grip. A pale glow illuminated ruby irises, causing the older man to wince. Begrudgingly he loosened his hold, partially from the sight of fierce determination, and partially because he could see that she was suffering from the same sickness Cloud had been.
Yet somehow, she was still on her feet.
"Shit Barret! She's got mako poisoning!"
"You must be a goddamned genius Cid!" Barret bellowed. "How ya suppose she got that after marinating in that shit for who the hell knows how long?"
"Hey! Don't you fucking talk to me like that! I'm saying that we need to get her to a doctor you hulking dipshit!" He flicked his cigarette angrily to the ground. "Unless you know how to treat it? Oh but of course you do...Corel's just full of brilliant doctors who plink their pick axes on rocks for a living right?"
"Now look here you piss poor excuse for a pilot! You couldn't navigate the head out of your ass if..."
"Will you two geezers just stop?! Cloud's dead! He's dead and you guys can't be bothered to take a moment to show some fucking respect!"
"Respect? Do you even know what respect is you materia stealin' little pest? "
"Oh you want to have a go at me old man? C'mon lets do it then! I'll wipe the floor with your wrinkled old ass!"
In another time she would have been the one to step in to calm their misguided anger. To lay hands on them and promise them everything would be alright. To hold them in their grief, comfort them in their confusion. That had been her purpose up until this point. They were exhausted and lashing out at each other because they had nowhere else to focus their anger. Without someone to lead them, their group would unravel as quickly as it had been threaded together.
Right now however none of them mattered. Nothing they said, nothing they did. She didn't hear their raised voices, the bickering faded in the distance. All that mattered to her in the last hours of the planet's life was a man lying on the beach with none left in him. She could be as selfish as any of them.
Tifa crawled over the splintered remnants of a dock to see Vincent crouching above a prone figure with a familiar pair of boots sprawled on the sand. She could see Nanaki with him, his fiery tail waving like a distress signal in the air as he watched anxiously. Her legs buckled and she fell to her knees beside the cloaked man as he cast another restore materia. The green light blinding her briefly before her vision refocused. Cloud lay in front of her washed in the warm glow that faded slowly as the healing powers dissolved beneath his soaked clothes.
What remained once it had vanished was sickly pale skin radiating with lifestream. Half lidded eyes that stared vacantly towards the heavens beyond the planet. Blue lips that were parted enough for his teeth to capture the glint of the flaming chaos in the skies above them. She held her breath and waited. There was no response.
"There's nothing else I can do," Vincent said as he came to his feet. He clasped her shoulder for a moment before turning away. Nanaki lowered his great head and touched the side of Cloud's face with his nose. A low moan rose from his throat and he closed his eyes.
"I am so sorry Tifa." he said softly, looking up at her. He paused for a moment before echoing the words she had given him. "Be strong."
And that was it. They were really giving up on him. It wasn't all that surprising. They had watched the man unravel and descend into madness. The last time they had seen him he was nearly comatose and babbling incoherently in a wheelchair. Hell, before that they had watched him nearly kill Aerith and then seal the fate of the planet by handing her murderer the Black Materia. She could understand their hesitance.
But for the life of her she could not understand her own as she sat there numbly. Looking at him like at any moment his chest would heave and those bright eyes would refocus, their inner fire returning. He'd look at her and she could tell him that they made it. She could watch those lips form into that beautiful smile he'd kept hidden from all of them. She was not letting go. Not now. Not when everything was just beginning make sense.
"Cloud..."
Tifa brushed a lock of hair away from his face, feeling the waxen texture of his skin beneath her fingertips. She put a hand to his forehead, gently shifting his head back. It obeyed listlessly beneath her touch as trembling fingers tilted his chin. Leaning in closer to him she marveled for half a second at the peace that adorned his usually troubled features. It was then, lingering in that small space between their lips that she found her voice, and screamed.
"Breathe!"
Pinching his nose roughly between her thumb and forefinger she covered his mouth with her own, and forced her breath into his lungs.
The hesitations fell away as she ripped his cable knit shirt down the middle and placed the heel of her hand against his chest. She straightened her shoulders and interlocked her fingers before she began counting as she thrust her weight against his sternum in quick successive motions.
"You're not going to do this. You didn't make it this far to die on this damned beach! Do you hear me?"
His head lolled side to side from the force of her compressions like he was giving her an answer. Though his eyes still stared past her into nothing. This was her Cloud from Nibelheim. Always somewhere far away, and as stubborn as the day was long.
"Breathe you thickheaded son of a bitch!" she cried before filling his lungs with air a second time. "I'm not going to ask you again!" The anger rose with every push of her hands against his chest, every breath she drove into his body. It also had something to do with that constant hum in her ears that kept growing louder with each passing second.
It reminded her of the cicadas seething in the forests below Nibelheim. Masked and subtle, yet quick to intensify as more joined their chorus, then it became almost deafening. As a child she became convinced that if she listened to them long enough it would drive her mad. Something her father had dismissed as nonsense. But as the buzzing began growing in intensity, she began to consider that maybe he hadn't known everything.
She tried to drown them out with her own voice. They were starting to make her lose count.
"Cloud, do you remember when you saved that little girl in Junon? You told the man on the beach you didn't know how to do this."
His chest rose as she breathed into him again.
"I could have...maybe I should have helped her. But...I didn't. I was still trying to figure you out. I wondered if you remembered that day. The one before you asked me to meet you at the well. I was trying to learn CPR from that old manual. And you volunteered to help me."
Tifa shook her head as she thought of the look he had given her all those years ago.
"No that's not right. I volunteered you didn't I?"
She paused long enough to let him answer, even though she knew he wouldn't.
"It was a silly memory to hold on to I guess. But that was the first time I'd ever gotten that close to you," she forced a laugh through her gritted teeth. "We were both scared to death weren't we? I thought if you remembered any of it, then I'd just know it was you. I wouldn't have had any more doubts."
His head continued to nod back and forth.
"I know, that was stupid of me. I should've just asked you. But you saved her anyway right? You didn't give up. Well I'm not giving up either. Because you're not supposed to quit. You don't quit until..."
Her next words were cut off by her own scream. Her hands darted reflexively to her ears and she doubled over in pain as the chorused humming reached its crescendo. She could feel the cicadas crawling beneath her scalp, fluttering their veined wings before burrowing deep into her skull.
"Get out!" the fighter cried, clawing at her skin and wrenching handfuls of hair from her head.
"Get out," they echoed back to her in her own voice. Low and sneering and dripping with malice. And to her horror she realized they weren't cicadas at all. They were the voices from the lifestream.
"Stop it!" She broke into sobs. "Why are you doing this? We haven't done anything to you!"
"Liar."
"It's not our fault. It's not his fault."
"Tifa Lockhart is a liar," they hummed in unison like bullying children.
"He couldn't control himself, he just forgot who he was that's all...I forgot too. Give us a chance to make this right!"
"Too late."
"No." She shook her head before thrusting her hands against his chest with renewed vigor. "I won't let you take him!"
"How many lives have you taken?"
"Please..."
"What's one more?"
Images flashed through her mind of crumbling plates, burning homes, and twisted charred bodies. Mouths agape, faces staring up at her. Some she knew, most she didn't. They faded and she saw her dearest friend with her hands clasped together kneeling on the other side of Cloud. Emerald eyes looked at her as she tried to speak, tried to scream but she couldn't do either because she was choking. Suffocating on the thick liquid of her own lifeblood as it erupted from her mouth in waves, spilling down her throat, consuming all her bright and cheerful colors in dark crimson gore.
Tifa shut her eyes tightly from the image and forced her breath past Cloud's lips once more. She jabbed her fingers to his neck feeling for a pulse she knew wasn't there. It didn't matter, because she wasn't stopping. She had to focus. She couldn't save him if she couldn't focus.
"Just look at you."
That voice was enough to make her own heart stop beating.
"Can't save anyone, can you?"
"No, no, no, no, no," the young woman whispered over and over as she shut her eyes tighter, using all of the strength she had left to keep from looking.
"Pathetic. Can't even save that bastard runt from next door."
It didn't work.
"Papa..." she whimpered to the man now standing across from her. She couldn't meet his eyes, only stare at that bloody, gaping hole of torn tissue left by Sephiroth's blade.
"You should have died that day with the rest of us."
Tifa felt searing pain as the scar on her chest split. She could hear the audible crack of her sternum and ribs as the masume sliced through her, tearing into the vital organs beneath. The breath hitched in her throat and all she wanted to do in that moment was curl up and die like she was supposed to all those years ago.
It burned. Oh god it burned.
"Don't give up, Tifa," another familiar voice whispered. It was calm and even and she recognized it as immediately as she had the last.
"Cloud..."
She returned her gaze to his distant, unresponsive stare. His voice changed pitch, softening to that unsteady tone that lied somewhere between a boy and a man. She suddenly remembered it so well.
"Don't listen to them. You can do anything you want, long as you keep trying."
She managed a smile despite the ache lingering in her chest. All of the mako induced illusions faded, and she was left with the confidence he had in her and the task at hand. His words surged hope through her exhausted body.
"I know you could save me if you had to, I don't doubt that for a second. Because you don't quit. I've never seen you give up on anything."
"I'm not giving up."
"You don't quit, right Tifa?"
"That's right."
The humming cicadas returned, and she found herself staring into the bright blue eyes of the boy who's memory had got her through so many obstacles in her life. The beach ebbed away into the rolling meadows and forests of Nibelheim. His features shifted and he gave her a wry smile as his unruly hair waved like the tall grass caught in the winds coming down the mountain.
"You don't quit until you're sure."
"I'm not sure Cloud," Tifa responded softly before reinforcing her words with a loud, unwavering demand.
"Now breathe!"
