AN: After including a small cameo with Cloud and Tifa in one of my other fics, I suddenly felt a spur to give them their own story. I have always been a fan of this pairing, since it seems to be the most canon (considering Aerith is kinda dead). There are a lot of interesting takes on their relationship already out there, but I hope to give it my own spin with this story. Those who read my other fics know by now that I don't do romance for the sake of romance, so get ready for a wild ride!

If you enjoy this series, please leave a fav, follow, or review. I try to keep my stories as canon as possible, but I'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions about where the story is headed! Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own any Square copyrighted material!

It was the third day in a row Tifa had woken up to an empty house. It was becoming more of a frequent occurrence now that Denzel was a teenager and Marlene back with her father, but she still couldn't quite get used to it. The bar was unnerving when empty, filled now with unfamiliar creaks and echoes usually stifled by loud laughter and childish giggles. Every morning, she'd pass Cloud's room to see another note pinned to his board, another file strewn across his desk, and the same half-made bed with his impression still in its sheets. She was happy that the delivery service was booming, but she couldn't pretend she didn't miss the stoic, brooding blonde.

Tifa stretched her tired muscles as she descended the stairs, grabbing an apron from a hook on the wall beside the bar. She threw it on bumped her hip into the swinging door, pushing her way toward the sink full of last night's dishes. It had been especially busy for a Wednesday, and Cloud again hadn't come home in time to help her clean up. She released a long, labored sigh before turning on the tap and diving into the mess.

Her mind wandered as she pushed through the monotony, and she somehow found herself coming up with reasons why Cloud had been so absent lately. The theory that seemed the most probable brought her back to the Sunday before last. They'd just returned home at three in the morning from searching the entire city for Denzel, after he hadn't come home by his curfew. They had eventually found him smoking cigarettes with some troublemakers from his school, and Cloud had given him a lecture like no other on the way home. It had surprised her quite a bit to hear him be so candid with the teen. He was usually quiet and reserved around Denzel and Marlene, never wanting to come off too fatherly to them. He always said that he didn't want to replace something they already had.

That night had been drastically different, however. It was the first time in years Tifa heard Cloud raise his voice. He told Denzel how disappointed he was and that his real parents would have been ashamed. When Cloud was finished, Tifa could have sworn she heard Denzel sniffling. She moved between the two boys, who walked in silence the rest of the way.

When they'd returned home and sent Denzel to his room for a week, Cloud and Tifa both found themselves back in the bar, wide awake and stressed from the hours spent searching the city. Tifa had already fixed herself a stiff drink, and Cloud immediately asked for one himself. After a few sips spent in tense silence, the pair had broken into hysterical laughter. Tifa thought they might have sounded mad to anyone within earshot. They spent the rest of the night getting drunk and recounting old stories of their childhood days, when Cloud would get into fights with the neighborhood boys for no reason, and when Tifa used to cut classes to make out with Johnny behind the gym. They knew they were no better than Denzel, but they also knew he needed to be scolded, and that it had been the right thing to do. Still, the booze made them feel better.

It was almost sunrise when Tifa had finally decided to go to bed, and Cloud, insisting on taking her glass to the sink for her, stumbled around behind the bar, nearly breaking the swinging door with his drunken muscles. When he'd reached for the glass, he somehow lost his footing and had ended up falling against her, pushing Tifa back against the bar, her cheek brushing his. Cloud had of course immediately backed away, dropping both glasses on the ground in the process. His cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of red and he stooped to clean the mess, but Tifa stopped him. Half drunk, half angry, and absolutely embarrassed, she insisted he go to bed before he broke something else. Cloud stood straight up, hurt, and turned his back to her, wobbling up the stairs in silence.

She'd barely spoken to him in the days after that, each one only sparing the other a glance as they passed in the bar here and there. A week later when Tifa had gone down to clean the dishes after a busy Saturday, she found them already done. Two new glasses were resting on the bar, with flowers from the church sitting inside them.

The thought of this brought a smile to her lips as she toweled the last of the dishes dry, placing it on the rack above the liquor shelf. Cloud was a mysterious guy, and though he had many reasons to be, his mystery often confused her. She would prefer him to just be candid with her, as he had been with Denzel, instead of trying to be drunkenly chivalrous or giving her gifts of apology.

Once the bar was in decent shape, Tifa made her way to the front door, and she opened it to the warm, midmorning air. Summer was slowing drawing to a close, and the air now had a crisp bite to it that refreshed her senses. She walked around to the right where a large, empty barrel sat, and she pushed it over a bit to reveal a stack of mail concealed beneath. She grabbed it and headed back inside, sifting through the various bills and newsletters, stopping on a postcard from Barrett and Marlene. She was riding on her father's shoulders (at 11, she was getting a bit old for it, but she still looked appropriately small compared to him), and they were standing on a cliff above the new oil fields Barrett had discovered almost two years before. Smiling, Tifa pinned the picture up next to the rest of the family portraits on the wall beside the bar.

She was getting ready to throw the rest of the mail on the counter when a familiar name made her freeze in her tracks. Her heart began to thump up into her throat as she pulled the envelope out of the stack and turned it over in her hands, tracing the return address scribbled almost illegibly on the front of it. Zangan.

Tifa tore open the packaging and unfolded the worn paper, her eyes scanning its message urgently:

My dear Tifa,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am sorry I have not reached out to you sooner, but I did not know where you might be. I wondered for many years if you had found the letter I left for you in Nibelheim. To quell my musings, and to satisfy others, I made my way back to that ghost of a town, the town I once knew like the back of my hand. I am pleased to say that it did not feel like a nightmare to return there. Shinra abandoned the town after the fall of Meteor, and its paid actors left with it. There were very few natives left to come back here, but a small colony of peace-loving people has migrated to your once beloved hometown. A sweet young mother and her sprightly little girl are now living in your old home. They have taken me in, and I am writing you this very letter from your window sill. Though is it really your window sill? Shinra's meddling has made this town lose some if its luster.

I am glad you found the gift I left for you all those years ago, and I hope you have been able to put it to good use. I met a man in the pub a few weeks ago who said he was from Edge, and he told me of the wonderful Seventh Heaven bar there, with the beautiful waitress, Tifa. My heart leapt when he spoke your name. I had him put your address on a napkin so that I could write to you. I wish I could say that I was doing so just to wish you well, but I'm afraid things are not quite that simple—they never have been, not since the nightmare that burned this town to the ground eight years ago.

I require your help, Tifa, my dearest student. There have been strange happenings in Nibelheim of late—the townspeople speak of a dark apparition that comes down from Mount Nibel at night and ruins crops, steals livestock, and even poisons the well. I did not believe it myself until I saw a young boy keel over after drinking the water straight from it. I suspect it is something evil left over in the reactor up there, but I am an old man now. I cannot go to investigate this matter, and the townspeople are much too afraid to do so themselves. I regret to ask you to undertake such a dangerous task, but I do not know who else to turn to. I do not wish to see this sweet, placid town fall to darkness once more.

Whether you choose to come or not, I want you to know, dear Tifa, that I am proud of you and the woman you have become. You are the realization of a true dream for me—I knew from the moment you stepped into my dojo that you would be a master, and a master you have become. I hope that I get to see you one last time before my old eyes go blind and hear your voice before I'm buried six feet under.

Always be brave.

Zangan

It was a slow day for deliveries. Cloud had only made three that day, all within a 100 mile radius of Edge, when he finally decided to call it quits. He was hesitant to return to the bar so early, knowing it might be awkward to be alone with Tifa again. He still hadn't forgotten his embarrassing encounter with her a week and a half earlier. His cheeks got hot every time he thought about it, but somehow he knew it wasn't just because he was embarrassed. He remembered the sweet smell of her perfume and her soft cheek next to his—all the things he hadn't taken the time to notice or appreciate in years. He had wanted to apologize for being such a dunce that night, but it seemed easier to just pretend it had never happened, rather than acknowledge the strange feelings that had been churned up by the encounter.

With a sigh, Cloud knocked back the kickstand on Fenrir and started the ignition, sending the machine roaring to life. He sped out of Healen, where he'd made his most recent delivery, and made his way over the plains toward Edge.

The short ride was over much too quickly—he soon found himself only blocks away from the bar with still half the day left. He would have to find ways to busy himself in order to stay out of Tifa's hair.

The garage door beside the bar crawled open on his approach, and he eased the bike into the dark room before sending the door closed behind him. He powered Fenrir down and opened its compartments, placing one lone piece of his fusion sword inside. It had been days since he'd actually had to use the thing, and even then only if he chose to take the shorter, more dangerous delivery routes as opposed to the safer ones. He was, of course, happy to see that the roads were cleaning up, but some part of him—the part of him that wasn't really him—was itching for a good fight.

Cautiously, Cloud made his way toward the door that linked the garage to the bar. He pushed it open slowly and peered inside, seeing no sign of Tifa within. He walked quietly up the stairs and turned to see Denzel's room, empty and messy, as usual. He rolled his eyes and continued on, figuring Tifa must have gone out for the day.

He turned into his room and shrugged out of the sheath slung of her shoulders, hearing it clatter to the ground. When he closed the door to shed more layers, he almost cried out at the sight of a head of brown hair standing by the window.

"Tifa!" he exclaimed. She wheeled on him, and a bad feeling roiled through his stomach at the distraught look on her face. "What's wrong?"

She took a deep breath. "You're home early," she said, her voice a surprisingly even keel.

"Slow day," he replied simply, still uneasy. "Is everything alright?"

Tifa moved toward him suddenly, arms crossed tightly over her chest, and looked hard at him. Slowly, she unfolded her arms and held out a piece of paper, clutched and crumpled in her hand.

Cloud stared at it for a while before taking it up and scanning it briefly.

"It's from Zangan," Tifa spoke as he read. "He wants me to come back to Nibelheim."

Cloud's heart sank at the mention of his old hometown. Nothing good had come from there since it had been burnt to the ground eight years ago, and he couldn't see why Zangan would have wanted to return to it, or why he would ever ask Tifa to do the same.

He raised his eyes to Tifa, who was still glaring at him pensively as if waiting for some kind of confirmation. Truth be told, he couldn't determine from the look whether she actually wanted to go or not. She would of course want to come to the aid of her old sensei, but she knew as well as him what kind of dangers and dark memories lurked there.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, suddenly forgetting about any awkwardness or embarrassment that might linger between the two of them.

Tifa puffed up, frustrated. "I don't know," she blurted at last. "I want to go—no, I need to, but I can't just leave you and Denzel here alone, and I don't know what kind of forces I'd be up against over there and I just—"

"Whoa, whoa," Cloud interrupted, grabbing her by the shoulder. "Who says you're going alone?"

Tifa blinked up at him, her mouth still half-open. "But… What about Denzel?"

Cloud laughed. "What about him?" he said. "We can dump him on Barrett. A few weeks with his uncle might do him some good and keep him out of trouble."

Tifa looked away and chewed her lip in thought for a bit. She then took the letter out of Cloud's hand and gripped it nervously. "You'd really come with me?" she asked, casting her warm brown eyes up to him again.

She was, of course, asking if he was ready to return to those twisted memories, and Cloud wasn't exactly that he was. Still, he wouldn't allow Tifa to face them alone. They had come up against much worse than bad memories in their years together—taken on everything from mighty Meteor to a moody teenager—and they hadn't yet broken. He resolved to keep up the trend.

"Of course I'll come," he replied at last. "I've been wanting to use that 'CLOSED FOR BUSINESS' sign Yuffie sent me a while back, anyway."

Tifa let slip a small laugh, half-comforted, as she always was, by his cheeky sentiments. She suddenly and quite unexpectedly found herself wrapping her arms around his middle in a strange, sideways hug. "Thank you, Cloud," she muttered into his shoulder guard. "This means a lot to me."

Cloud, stiff and surprised, and catching a hint of that same perfume that had last made him shatter two perfectly good glasses, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a short squeeze.

A floorboard squeaked.

"UGH!" Denzel exclaimed from the doorway, sending the two of them staggering apart. "Get a room, you two."