And This War's Not Over
By Rhino7
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This is mine. Ha, I lied when I said the previous one-shot was the last! I still had this little thing up my sleeve! Mwahaha. Anyway, this one-shot takes place roughly a month after Ask Mercy Not of Me, and is a representation of Leon and Tifa's relationship going into Lay Down the Salt Lines. The title is from the song Shattered by Trading Yesterday, which I don't own and have no affiliation with. It's been a while since I wrote a really emotional anything, so please forgive if it's awkward.
..:--X--:..
Tifa had barely closed the door of Merlin's house behind her when she was yelling across the lot.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" She snapped.
The two men in drab uniform had their hands on the motorcycle. One of them had his foot poised to release the kickstand that had been holding the bike upright for more than two months. Both of them looked over at her as she approached.
"What the Hell are you doing?" She repeated as she marched over to them.
"Removing this motorcycle to the impound lot across town." The first man said while his partner lowered his foot from its previous kicking position.
"Under whose order?" Tifa put her hands on her hips.
"Uh…" The first man looked to his partner, who scratched a receding hairline and shrugged. "Order of the standing Alliance states that all property left behind by the deceased is to be moved 60 days after death if no ownership has laid claim to them." He informed.
Tifa narrowed her eye, "You're repo-ing it?"
"Yes, ma'am, under orders of course." The second man conceded.
She exhaled heavily through her nose and swallowed hard. "Come back tomorrow."
"Pardon?"
"Get out!" She barked. "Leave it here."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but the impound—"
"I'll give you to three!" Tifa yelled over him. "One—"
"Miss, please—"
"Two!"
"If you'll just listen—"
"Two and a half!"
"Jeff, let's just come back tomorrow." The second man said, tugging his friend's shirt sleeve.
'Jeff' paused, looking to Tifa with a soft frown. "He was your friend, wasn't he?"
"Three!" Tifa said threateningly.
Both men scattered, darting across the parking lot and disappearing around the corner.
She didn't chase after them. She didn't really care where they went, as long as they didn't take this bike with them. She swallowed convulsively, turning her eye back to the massive motorcycle. The solid black body was mussed under a film of dust. It wasn't shining or gleaming anymore. The dust had been displaced from where the repo men had touched it. She quivered in fury as she saw the fingerprints.
No one else had touched Fenrir in two months.
Two months had passed since the Fractured Circle bombed the Allied Headquarter building, killing dozens of Council representatives and destroying half of downtown Radiant Garden in the subsequent collapse of the building. Tifa had been one of the few survivors, her only lasting injury being the loss of her eye, which she now covered with a patch. A lot of her friends were among the dead.
Dead.
It was such a painful, ugly word. But it was true.
Two months had passed since Fenrir had moved from the lot behind Merlin's house. Cloud had parked it there before going into the Allied Headquarter building, and had never come back. Tifa swallowed and stared at the monster of a motorcycle, holding her arms about herself.
It was impossible to win a staring contest with a ton of black steel.
"Looks like we've both been abandoned." She said quietly.
Fenrir didn't reply.
Tifa bit her lip, running a hand through her hair and sighing heavily. This bike had been Cloud's most prized possession. He was always maintaining it, polishing it, oiling the parts. There was always something to fix or take care of. He had always smelled like steel and oil because of this thing. Now every time she looked at it or smelled machine oil, she thought of him.
Now Cloud was dead, and she couldn't accept it. She wouldn't accept it. Even after the funeral, the burial, the so-called closure. There was no closure for this. The leader of the Fractured Circle was still out there. Cloud's murderer was still roaming free. She could not move on until he had seen justice. Cloud deserved to have that monster executed.
No ownership had been claimed on the motorcycle.
The closest thing to a living relative that Cloud had was Tifa, so technically Fenrir belonged to her now. She would have preferred it to have been destroyed in the bombing with its original owner. Tifa couldn't bear to think of Fenrir, see the thing on the road, see it in this parking lot every day, knowing it was hers and knowing that it didn't belong to her.
All the dials, the brakes, and the effects were all set to his preferences. To change any of it, from the length of the foot rests to the radio station, would…acknowledge that those preferences didn't matter anymore. To admit to the world that Cloud wasn't coming back, that Fenrir had been left and abandoned in this parking lot, waiting for a master that would never return. Sort of like how Tifa was waiting for her friend who would never return.
Tifa looked down at her feet and immediately around the empty parking lot, anywhere but at the massive black bike. The elephant in the room. Her eye was burning, that familiar tingle at the corners that told her a reservoir wanted to be opened. She choked, forcing the tears back. She had shed far too many tears on this already. She wasn't moving on. She was dwelling. She knew that; she hated that. She had no idea how to move on. She was trapped here, in this Cloud-less limbo, with this bike that now belonged to her but would never belong to her. She hated this.
Cloud was dead.
A helpless, pathetic sob escaped her and she lifted a hand to her forehead, hunching her shoulders. She dropped her bag and took a few steps in retreat until her back touched the cool brick of the back of Merlin's house. She leaned against it, slowly sinking to her seat in the lot. Fenrir stood across from her, just meters away.
Tifa swallowed hard, looking up at the soft blue sky overhead, pleading with the heavens. Why? Why was she being forced to endure this? Hadn't she suffered enough? She had lost everybody: Cloud, Cid, Yuffie, Aerith. They were all gone. All of her friends, practically her family, had been ripped away from her. Her heart had been ripped out and she had been left bleeding on the floor. Now, men were coming to take Fenrir away, the last shred of evidence in her life that Cloud had ever lived. She was the only one left.
The back door of Merlin's house opened.
She was almost the only one left.
Tifa closed her eye, the tears winning this battle. They broke from under her eyelid and made tracks down her cheeks. She drew her knees up to her chest and framed her face with her hands, hoping to hide this long overdue emotional breakdown. She looked forward at Fenrir and felt more of her break inside. Her lips were tight and she covered her mouth to choke back the pitiful sobs that were wracking her chest.
She wanted to just close her eye and make it all go away. To rewind the clocks to before this mess ever happened. To bring them back and prevent the attack, the massacre, and the death. All she got for this mode of thinking was a pile of 'what if's and 'maybe's. Hiccupping through her tears, she kept her eye pinched closed, tired of seeing Fenrir without Cloud attached to the image.
Neither of them said anything.
No words were needed. Tifa knew it was Leon. No one else would happen upon her breaking like this without barraging her with questions and stupid, generic reassurances, arm pats, and sad smiles. She couldn't handle any more of that. No, Leon didn't bother with any of that. He knew what was wrong. Her friends had been his friends. She didn't know how he WASN'T breaking like she was. Stupid testosterone poisoning.
She stared determinedly at the ground, tears flowing silently. He didn't say anything either, just closing the door behind him and standing beside her in the empty lot. Tifa lifted her wrist to the corner of her eye, just leaving it there as she gasped in that way associated with crying.
"He-He's gone." She choked out finally.
He exhaled heavily before sinking down to sit beside her. Tifa didn't look at him, her eye just straying like a magnet to Fenrir, at the dusty steel and unused handle bars. Leon just sat beside her, their shoulders barely touching. Tifa felt an immense strength just from that mild contact. It let her break faster, harder.
Tears came in earnest now, nearly choking her. Tifa hugged her knees, trembling all over as the dreaded reality crashed over her. Cloud was never coming back. She would never see him, hear him, touch him again. She would never get to talk to him, tell him…never again. Every opportunity they may have ever had was dead, taken with him to a premature grave.
"I don't understand…" She gasped out, pushing her face against her knees, muffling her voice. "Why did this happen?"
It was an unanswerable question, and Leon didn't try to reply.
"What did any of us do to deserve this? What did Cloud do to deserve this?" She cried. "It hurts…all the time…it never stops and…and I don't know how to make it stop."
She hugged her knees to herself desperately, her entire frame shaking.
"God…" She moaned, wiping at her eye fruitlessly. "I h-hate this."
Leon remained silent and she chanced a sideways glance at him. That stern, drawn expression was in place, and he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at Fenrir, his eyes carefully away from Tifa's bloodshot, tear-streaked face. Most people would be hugging her, telling her it was okay, they were there for her, and other such things. She found herself feeling more relaxed with the silence. Empathy. No amount of sympathy was worth anything if the person didn't know the pain you were feeling. Leon knew, and that meant worlds more than any kind words and soft faces would.
The rear mufflers on the motorcycle remained silent as well, the vibrating roar of the engine quiet for the past two months. Tifa looked to it again, drawn like a moth to the flame, like a bug to the zapper. Except this memory wouldn't kill her…fortunately or unfortunately. She wasn't sure yet.
"How do I make it stop hurting?" She hoarsely asked, hating how broken she sounded.
Leon didn't move, legs stretched out beside her, arms folded.
A long moment passed.
"You don't."
Tifa grimaced, what little composure she had regained threatening to collapse all over again.
"I can't live like this." She said brokenly. "He's gone and…it's killing me."
"Keep fighting." He said tonelessly.
Tifa tilted her head back against the wall, making an exasperated noise. "How the Hell am I supposed to do that? Look at me."
Leon kept his gaze on Fenrir, though his thoughts looked a million miles away if she'd learned how to read his face at all.
"Hey. Look at me." She demanded, slapping his arm.
With a long-suffering sigh, he turned and looked her in the eye. Tifa immediately wished she hadn't told him to look at her. Now there was nothing for him to see but her, the pathetic, broken weakness in her one eye. All of her walls had long ago crumbled away, leaving her soul naked to anyone who looked in her remaining eye. She didn't have it in her to put up a façade of being held together. Whatever he saw when he looked at her now, it was all that remained of her. That kind of vulnerability was humbling and it was against her nature.
She looked away after a moment, gaze returning to Fenrir.
"I don't know how." Her voice was raspy.
He grunted at that.
"How to keep fighting." She reiterated. "I don't know how."
She felt defeated.
"Figure it out." He muttered.
The matter-of-fact way he said it made Tifa clear her throat, snorting incredulously.
"What if I can't?" She conceded. "What if I'm not strong enough?"
A beat passed.
"Be strong enough." He replied.
"God." Tifa curled a fist, hitting herself in the shin. "I can't do this. I can't just 'be strong enough'. Cloud is…You can't just tell me…Dammit." She hissed, wiping at her tears in favor of anger.
They both fell quiet again for a few minutes.
"They came to take it away today." She said thickly. "Repossess it. They were babbling about Allied orders, after 60 days, they would take unclaimed property to an impound…I threatened them until they left."
Leon didn't say anything, so Tifa helplessly continued.
"I can't stand seeing this thing…every single day…but I wouldn't let them take it away…I couldn't." She placed one hand on her forehead. "What am I supposed to do? It's not mine. Fenrir doesn't belong to me in any sense other than legally. I don't want it. I can't stand looking at it…but I can't let it disappear…It'd be like betraying him…somehow…I don't know…" She hugged her knees again.
The shadow of Merlin's house had stretched halfway across the lot by now as the sun continued its path across the sky. Neither of them made any motion to get up though.
"I'm sick." She said flatly after a moment.
"No argument here."
A rueful smirk curled Tifa's lips and she sniffled, wiping her tears away for the final time.
"We're all a little sick around here." He said quietly.
"There's no cure for this." She replied.
"Don't be dramatic."
"I'm not being dramatic."
"Hm."
Tifa swallowed hard, her throat felt thick. "I'm not sure if I want to move on."
Leon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in quiet thought.
"I've created this…shell." She went on. "A warm, numb, comfortable shell. Where I don't have to feel, to see, to face this…reality. Reality sucks."
Leon smirked at that.
"And you…want me to just move on. Just 'be strong enough', and I don't know if I'm totally willing to do that." She exhaled in defeat.
The smirk slid off Leon's face as though he'd been slapped and he looked at her, almost angrily.
"Don't do that."
She blinked. "What?"
Leon got his hands under him and pushed himself to his feet. "Don't give up. I won't let you."
Tifa watched him stand, not moving from her position on the ground. "Why not?"
"Because it's a cowardly thing to do." He said flatly, offering her a hand up.
Tifa looked at the offered hand, confused. She looked up at him and then back at Fenrir. "But…" She trailed away.
Leon dropped his hand and then huffed, reaching down and taking both of her hands, tugging them loose from their grip around her knees.
"Stand." He said sternly.
Tifa hung her head and let him pull her to her feet. Standing, she looked at him.
"Happy?" She folded her arms close to her body.
Leon didn't answer, opening the back door of Merlin's house. "Go inside…please."
The 'please' threw her and she paused.
"Why?"
"It can't stay there forever." Leon nodded toward Fenrir.
Tifa glanced to Fenrir and then back to him. "What're you going to do?"
"What needs to be done." He said vaguely. "Trust me."
Tifa wanted to argue, but he was ushering her into the house and she found herself standing in Merlin's living room as Leon closed the door behind her. Swallowing, she crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Leon apparently trusted her not to lock the door or anything. Or else he knew a locked door had nothing on her roundhouse. Irrelevant at the moment.
She watched as Leon crossed the lot to the motorcycle. Fenrir stood staunch, like some sort of Mexican standoff with the man. Tifa pursed her lips as Leon gave the bike a onceover before moving into the arms' length zone of the bike, the bubble that Tifa felt compelled to protect. She drew a careful breath and watched him.
Leon slowly reached over and grasped the handlebars, inside the grips themselves and on the steel instead. He nudged the kick stand back against the body, staggering slightly before adjusting to the startling weight of the thing, balancing it on its wheels. This done, he turned the steering bars until the front wheel shifted.
He rolled it forward, pushing the bike out of the lot and out of Tifa's line of sight. Inside the house, Tifa watched him and Fenrir disappear around the corner before moving away from the window. She sank into a chair in the kitchen and just sat there.
She felt weak, pathetic, and foolish. She looked at the lot, now completely empty. Something inside her felt the weight ease slightly. Fenrir was gone, just like Cloud, taking all those 'what if's and 'maybe's and pain with it. No, the pain would remain, for a while, if not permanently.
...:--X--:..
An hour passed before Leon returned to Merlin's house.
Tifa was sitting on the couch in the break room, toying with a fray in the upholstery. Since she had been sitting there, she had turned the minor fray into a quarter-sized hole in the patching. She looked up when he walked in, but didn't say anything. She was torn between being furious with him and being grateful to him. She settled for a silent, meaningless glare.
It didn't take long before Leon couldn't avoid her anymore and walked into the break room.
"Where—" She started.
Leon cut her off by leaning forward and slapping the coffee table between them. He wordlessly straightened again, folding his arms and waiting for her reaction. Tifa looked from him to the coffee table.
A simple, brass key lay on the table.
"What's this?" She asked, picking it up.
"It's the key for a storage facility a few blocks down." Leon said flatly. "Rented in my name, so there's no connection to you."
Tifa inspected the key, looking back up at Leon.
"That's your key. I've got my own. I don't intend on ever using it." He explained.
"Why…did you do this?" She asked slowly.
"Because you wouldn't."
The accusation of weakness was ill-hidden and Tifa flinched.
"Thank you." She murmured.
Leon continued as though she hadn't spoken. "If I catch you moping around in front of it again, I'm changing the locks on the doors of the storage room."
Tifa pursed her lips, not saying anything. Having that restriction, that order not to dwell, should have insulted her. As it was, she felt…stronger, more in control of herself. Two months had passed, and she was curbing her grief, with help. Help. She swallowed hard.
"You just won't let me wallow in peace, will you?" She said, lifting her eyes from the key to Leon, who was focusing on the corner of the coffee table.
"I'm not letting you wallow, period." He said tonelessly. "You have to be strong enough."
"To what?" She set the key down. "They're all dead. What else is there left to be strong for?"
"The war isn't over." He said darkly. "It's just starting. Corbin Franks is still out there and Sora's got the entire Council wrapped around his finger. If democracy is ever going to return to the Alliance…if sanity is ever going to return to the Alliance, we—" He gestured between himself and Tifa, "need to be strong enough."
Tifa's eyebrows knit together. "What are you planning?"
"Nothing yet, but I need to know that you have my back." He said pointedly.
"Your back." She repeated.
"Yes." He folded his arms again. "Like it or not, you're all I've got and I'm all you've got. So don't you dare give up and surrender and leave me to fight this alone."
The responsibility behind his words landed on her shoulders like weights, burdening her like her grief had previously burdened her. Somehow, though, this weight was different, more tolerable, and right. The feeling of being needed felt good. Tifa straightened, pocketing the key and standing slowly.
"All right." She said, nodding seriously. "I won't."
The corner of Leon's mouth quirked. "I know you won't." He exhaled. "Are you coming back to work?" He half turned toward the door that would lead them back to the new Headquarter building.
Tifa bobbed her head, "Yes. I'm just…going to clean myself up first."
He just grunted at that and left her to it, leaving her alone in Merlin's house.
Tifa rubbed the side of her face as soon as she was alone, exhaling heavily and pulling the key out of her pocket. She looked at it for a long moment. No more 'moping around'. No more dwelling. Cloud was gone, and no amount of crying or anger was going to bring him back. She had bigger fish to fry now. She had someone's back to protect again.
Maybe she hadn't been abandoned after all.