A/N: Here's my first ever shoujo-ai fic. I think it's alright, but I'll leave you readers up to judge if it's up to snuff.

Never a Dry Shoulder by KyuuketsukiShounen

It's never a long rest between seeing tears. They come to me always, to wring their poor souls out on my feet. Perhaps it's because I'm supposed to be the optimist, reaching past the sky- finish line at the milky way. Perhaps it's because I can keep secrets, I'm someone they can trust with the confessions weighing down their souls like so many chains and balls. I am the shoulder to cry on, the beating heart they lay they heads upon, the hand to stroke their shaking backs. My heart takes it all in, but lets nothing out, all locked deep inside, the key flung far away and forgotten and perhaps rusted into nothingness.

Too many skeletons in this closet, one stacked on top of the other until I feel I might someday forget whose is whose. But of course that's a silly thought - I need only catch a glimpse of the grim bones of my own history to awaken the sharp pain that only those memories can give. And even though I've been carrying the weight for so long I'm not getting any stronger. Still they come to me, they still come, more of their dark stories to tell until I think my knees will give out and I will fall down and breathe no more.

Maybe it's my fault that I never have a dry shoulder on me. I let them run to me, ushering them into my arms like the mother they lost, or the one they couldn't go back to, or maybe the one they never had. Should I never have let them bury their faces into my hair, my bosom? But when I see their puffy eyes and the trembling lips I can only embrace the sorrow and let my heart be broken.

Sometimes when I'm feeling mean and selfish I say I will push them away, that my ears are closed to their black arcana. But I know inside that it would render my heart asunder to let them swallow their sorrows alone, for them to never hear the words they crave, the ones I crave myself, that they only have to hold on a little longer, everything will be alright.

It's always the nights after that I dread. The night after confronting a past left behind, the night after epiphany - it's these nights when I wait in the dark for them to come, waiting in silence for their whispered secrets and hopes and fears as I try not to fall apart in front of them. I try to keep my head up; Tifa, ever the optimist. But it's hard to hold your head high when your heart is drowning in tears.

Still, they come, chaining me hopelessly to their sorrows as I pretend I can ignore my own bitter story, even though I'm floundering in space for someone to tell me to hold on, just hold on.

The worst was the night after Nibelheim; the hand on my back as Cloud urged me awake and the frantic look in his eyes. I remember the path through the mountains and wondering if the others were still asleep and if they would come looking. I remember seeing Cloud cry for the first time since that time, since the mountains and the bridge, when I woke up in a hospital bed and saw his spiky head lain dejectedly on my lap and that was so long ago I can't even tell if it's a dream or if it really happened.

Since we met again, I know he tries to be strong for me, he knows that I'm overloaded. He reassures me with empty words that are still full of heart. But he finally cracked when we saw that ugly industrial spire, the reactor that haunts both our nightmares and has warped in our memories so that fact and fiction mix together into daunting myth-legends.

Cloud is the one who tells me, "It's alright." He is the one who tries to comfort me. And as much as I see his efforts, I know it will never work as much as I want it to because I can never cry with him. I have to keep my chin up so he'll do the same. I've promised myself I'll never break him, that I will always be there to piece him back together. But I realize that promise seems to have blanketed over our entire group.

Each one of them has their own dark parasite that burrows deep and festers in their lives. Another set of sorrows to lock inside a quickly dying heart. But what makes the chains feel that much heavier is that for each of their sorrows, there is one of my own to parallel. Vincent and Barrett with their broken pasts; Cid with his broken dreams; Cait Sith's foundering loyalties; motherless Yuffie and Red XIII.

There is no place for mytears to go and so I keep them inside, swallowing them so many times my veins run with liquid pain instead of blood and I realize if I don't do something I'll burst. I'm supposed to be Tifa; Tifa the optimist. But what optimist hurts too much to even look up to wish upon the stars?

I want to spill these secrets out onto the ground and let go, but I can't find the key and my heart is locked down, pain and horror trapped shut inside a gilded package.

So one day, as our party trudges through the hills I quietly excuse myself and as abruptly as I had announced it, I sprint past the hills to the plains, to the farmlands. I run and I run and it almost feels like I'm flying with winged feet; I close my eyes and keep my legs moving until they finally falter beneath me and I collapse.

I try to stop my mind from racing and I rest into the ground, long stalks of grain rising up all around me. All the colors are so bright - the earthy golden stalks, the vibrant blue sky with its clouds so pure white I could believe they are just giant puffs of cotton someone had thrown into the sky and they had just stuck there, floating forever in suspension. Then the sun is so bright but so beautiful that I just have to look at it even if I have to squint, but all the colors blur and turn into beautiful abstract shapes, warped by the tears I find running down my cheeks and now that I have started I can't stop and the tears just keep coming, creeping warmly across my face and I just sob into the dark, rich soil. The wind blows by and it smells so fresh that I only feel sicker that I can't enjoy it.

And I suddenly smell something like fresh flowers and I turn and see a blur of pink and brown and when it comes closer, I see there is green in there as well. And she is as bright as the sun but I don't have to squint for her and I find myself finally with a shoulder to cry upon, a beating heart to rest my head upon, a hand that would stroke my shaking back as the sobs wrack my body violently. And I bury my face into her hair, which has shaken loose from its braided plait, and it smells like flowers and a just little bit like sweat, but that makes it all the sweeter because then I know she's real and not a passing fantasy.

And I want to stop because she is our pure one, the one we love for her untainted spirit. And I want to claw myself to pieces because it's not right what I'm doing, I'm only chaining our souls together so if I sink, she'll sink with me, drowning together in tragic romance. But the burdens don't drape themselves around her like they do to me; they seem to burn away in her light, her soul seeming so ancient in its power and yet newborn in its chastity.

And then she whispers my name and lays her lips so gently on my forehead and even though it still hurts I know it'll be okay. And it feels so real, so organic, so innate to the earth, like the color of honey when you hold it up to the light, or the first bite of a peach from the tree in the garden and the sound of your laugh as the juice runs down your chin, cool and sweet.

Her mouth feels so gentle on my brow and it slowly comes down to find my own mouth and between the fluttering butterfly kisses she laughs, but it's a sad sound and she tells me that for her, at least for her could I learn to love without pain.

And my eyes are open and so is my heart for the first time in what feels like a lifetime and I realize that nothing was ever so simple. All I'd ever tried to do when I let them come at me with their liquid eyes was to love them. And in a blink I learn that I can love them, understand their pain without having to share it so intimately. And there don't have to be chains holding me down and I can be just me, Tifa the optimist and not the one with all the tears. My shoulders can be wet and soggy as ever but it doesn't matter because I'm finding out that you don't have to let sorrow kill you and hold you down.

In the swift instant, I realize so obviously that love was the far-flung key and even though it's dusty and unused, I still have it within me to polish and shine to be radiant again. And the chains come off and the locks in my heart begin to come undone and I feel I can stand up again, and so I do, arms draped loosely around the one in pink who smells like flowers and just a little bit like sweat.

Then she runs off, giggling, a happy sound this time, and I chase after with laugher and kisses.

Endnote: Enjoyable? I hope so. It morphed a lot from what I had originally planned, even making me omit the trigger sentence that inspired me to write this. Should I write more shoujo-ai? Or am I ruining a perfectly good category? Well, whatever your comments, please review.