And her breath is caught in her throat, and her body is weak and unstable, and her eyes are wide and disbelieving, and her voice has closed off and nothing comes out of her gaping mouth.
She stands at the door, holding onto the frame with all the strength she can manage. Her hand is becoming red from the pressure, and a wooden splinter on the door is beginning to cut into her skin, and her hand bled, but she didn't care because this doorframe was solid. Solid, and had always been there, and was stable, and was not back from the dead.
Her large brown eyes begin to tear. She drops the shopping bag she was holding, and she makes a strangle sound, a sound that comes deep from within her throat and it settles in Scarlet's ears like lead.
Scarlet merely laughs.
Her face was scarred. One eye was gone, and Scarlet hadn't bothered to cover it up. Skin hung around the empty socket, useless and dried up and horrifying. There is a large burn on her chest, the skin forever blackened and blistered. Her right arm has been amputated. Her hair looked as if it was self-cut with a knife and without a mirror. The longest strand came down to her chin.
She still wore a small, tight, erotic red dress.
There is fresh blood trickling down her thigh.
She was spread on a couch, one leg straight, the other bent and leaning against the backing. Her one arm was tracing a pattern on the floor, her lips were pursed and adorned with bright red lipstick.
She reminded Tifa of a succubus, who, once beautiful and the queen of her kind, had been destroyed and denounced. Yet, in denial of this fact, she continued to act as she did before, turning what would have been a man's blissful dream into nothing but a nightmare.
Scarlet looks at Tifa, her lone eye filled with obsession and anger and insanity. She curls her lips upward into a twisted smile, and she says "Surprised?"
Her voice is low, raspy, hoarse, and injured.
Tifa swallows hard, and says nothing.
Scarlet chuckles, and it sounds strangled and strange. "I don't die so easy." She begins to unfold herself from her current position, and ends up sitting upward with one leg folded over the other and her one arm spread across the back of the couch. She moves slowly, fluidly, cat-like. Tifa takes a step backwards.
Taking another step away from Scarlet, Tifa manages to say "How?"
Scarlet shakes her head, smiling cruelly. "Luck. Luck, I'm sure. It's always luck, isn't it? I'm one hell of a lucky bitch, aren't I?" She leaned forward, slightly. "It's great, right? Me being alive." She stood up, and took a step towards Tifa. "I can walk. I can talk. I can breath and I can smile and . . ."
She reached behind her, and there was suddenly a dagger in her hand. Tifa gasped, quietly.
"I can kill."
She started walking, slinking, prowling towards Tifa. Tifa was frozen in place, a pillar of solid fear. There was something about Scarlet that was unnatural. It scared her more than anything had ever scared her before.
Tifa watched Scarlet come closer and closer to her, half of her wondering why she was so afraid when she had faced worse, half of her merely quivering and whimpering and wishing she could be somewhere else.
She watched as Scarlet put her dagger to Tifa's throat. Tifa let out a cry, grabbing the doorframe even tighter. She held onto it as if it were life itself, as if she thought that, held tight enough, it would make Scarlet go away.
The dagger was cold, and sharp. Like a carefully pointed piece of ice, meticulously chiseled away from a glacier and then sharpened with the most delicate point history has ever known.
It was Scarlet's favorite.
She put small pressure on her weapon, breaking the surface of Tifa's skin. Small amounts of blood escaped from her body and ran down her neck.
It stung.
Scarlet licked her lips.
"I can kill," she repeated, slowly dragging her dagger down Tifa's throat, careful not to push harder. "I killed twice today. I killed a girl who stared at me funny. It's very insulting, really, when people stare at you. I used to love it. Crave it, really. Ask for it. But now that I look like this . . ." She pierced Tifa's skin a little deeper. "I feel insulted."
She had reached the base of Tifa's neck. She began to retrace the line of blood she created, with her never melting sliver of ice, this time cutting just a little deeper. "I killed her by shooting her in the head. Then put the gun in her hand. Always make it look like suicide, Tifa, it's the best cover up. Nobody ever suspects the cripple when it's a suicide."
Tifa wanted to swallow, but couldn't. She feared Scarlet would kill her if she did. Her throat felt clenched and dry, and it took all her strength not to wet it.
"Do you know who else I killed today?" Scarlet asked, her voice high-pitched, and sounding like a mockery of casual. "He answered the door when I knocked. I had another knife, you know. I ran it through his eye before he could attack. He's eyeless now. Just like me."
She withdrew the knife from Tifa's neck, staring at, turning it around and admiring every corner of it. "I would have let him live. But then he cut my leg." She turned her head, so she faced Tifa. She made a pouty face, her bottom lip jutted out, her one eye filled with emotional hurt and innocence. "He icut/i my ileg/i, Tifa."
She looked back at her knife. "So I killed him."
She looked back at Tifa. "Do you know who that man was?"
Quietly, her voice shaking and full of shock, she said "Cloud."
"That's right," Scarlet said. Almost threateningly.
She brought her knife back to Tifa's throat. She smiled like a child at Christmas, with presents laid out for her at every corner of her large, messy room colored with white walls and pink sheets. "He went down pretty fast. I cut his neck, just like I'm doing yours." She cocked her head to one side, thinking.
"Well. I did it much quicker. And deeper. And the cut was horizontal."
Tears began to fall out of Tifa's eyes, thick, fat, silent tears that never seemed to stop.
Scarlet clicked her tongue at this. "Now, don't go doing that! Aww, poor thing. You loved him, didn't you? Oh, don't cry, he's a man! He would have hurt you later on. Besides, I'm going to kill you, too, aren't I?"
She leaned forward slightly, as if she were to put the final bit of pressure on her knife, as if she was about to end this entire conversation, forever, and it would never be picked up again. Then, she withdrew her knife, and quickly licked the wound, tasting the blood as if were chocolate on a lover's chest.
"Or will I?" she asked, darkly.
She grabbed the hand Tifa used to hold onto her doorframe, ripping it off forcefully, and Tifa's hand began to bleed more at this action. Scarlet pulled her into the middle of the room, and then pushed Tifa, hard, on her chest. Tifa gasped, falling to the floor. She still cried silently.
Scarlet walked over, straddling her legs over Tifa's fallen body. She slowly, slowly, slowly bent over, lowering her legs while she did. When her legs were nearly split and her face was inches away from Tifa's, she asked, again, less rhetorically, "Will I?"
Tifa shook her head, praying she had the right answer.
Scarlet smiled like a schoolteacher about to give a gold star to her favorite student.
"That's right. I won't."
She dropped all the way down to the floor, and then moved her legs together. She lay directly on top of Tifa.
"I'll merely torture you."
She was smiling.
"See . . . It was you that destroyed me. I know the story. Cloud joined your little group when you asked him too. It's your fault that Cloud got involved."
She giggled.
"All. Your. Fault!" she repeated, as if she were speaking to a child who had accidentally knocked over the table, and found it extremely cute and amusing that the child didn't know any better.
"Cloud was the strongest, but you were the brains, weren't you? Always back there. Manipulating. Telling him what to do. Telling him to destroy Shinra. Oh, you hated me, didn't you? You wanted to destroy me. Was I more attractive than you? Did you think that? Is that why you hated me?"
Tifa, once again, shook her head, appalled at how wrong, how very iwrong/i, Scarlet had twisted their situation.
"Let me tell you something," Scarlet said.
"I was never more attractive than you. Never."
And then she kissed Tifa, softly, on the lips.
"You're an Angel of Death, aren't you, Tifa? Beautiful, mysterious, no one ever guesses that it's you. No one. You're eyes are too large, too child-like, too pure. Your body is too slender, your breasts are too perfect, your lips are too full. You are untouchable, and you are unspoiled, and you are innocent. No one suspects you, no, they merely want you, or wish to be you. You've made everyone love you, haven't you, Tifa?"
Tifa only stared at Scarlet in horror.
She never did those things.
She never was those things.
This was all a fantasy in Scarlet's head.
"I loved you, Tifa," Scarlet continued. "I loved you when I first saw you, and I loved you when I first touched you, and I loved you when you slapped me across the face and called me bitch. Did you ever know how much I loved you? Did you?"
"No," Tifa said, softly.
"Yes you did," Scarlet hissed, becoming angry, suddenly, and looking more and more insane. "You did, two souls always know when they belong together. We're soul mates, fucking soul mates. And you betrayed me. I loved you, and you loved me, and you ignored it, and you helped kill me. You betrayed me, and did you know that, Tifa?"
"No," Tifa said, softly.
Scarlet smiled, her face brightening, her tone becoming excited. She went from obsessed and homicidal to a teenager at a friend's house, about to announce who had kissed her the day before.
"Do you want to know why else I didn't die back there?" Scarlet asked. "Why I'm so ilucky/i?"
She kissed the corner of Tifa's mouth, and murmured, before Tifa could answer, "Because I'm immortal."
Tifa, despite all her fear, despite the fact she knew her life was changed, forever, for the worst, gave a short abrupt laugh.
Scarlet smiled, and shook her head. "Silly girl. Think I'm joking? Really?" She reached behind her again, with her one arm, and brought out a syringe she had put into her dagger sheath.
She stuck it into Tifa's arm, and injected it into her bloodstream.
As Tifa began to react to the chemicals Scarlet had put in her, Scarlet stood. She walked over to the couch, and sat down again.
"It's amazing what the right mixture of Mako can do."
She leaned back, watching Tifa shudder and vomit and roll across the floor. This would last for another twenty minutes. It took ones body a while to get used to the Mako at such large quantities when it'd never been exposed to it before.
"Hojo was developing this. When Gast was head of the department, he ordered Hojo to stop this particular branch of research. Hojo only got to successfully use it on Vincent Valentine. And myself, when I got a hold of the documents and materials. Although he never knew it . . ."
She laughed.
"You're going to be forever twenty-three, Tifa. Aren't you excited? Forever young, forever perfect. Forever mine."
She was silent, waiting for Tifa's to calm down. Then she stood up. "First, Tifa, we'll find your friend Barret. Kill his little daughter, right in front of his eyes, then kill him. You'll get to see it all, Tifa. In fact, I'll let you destroy cute little Marlene! Let you hear the names and things Barret calls you as you slice into his daughter's body and make her scream. Then, possibly, we'll find your friend Yuffie. You don't like her much, do you? Well. We can burn down her town, and make sure she's in it. And . . . Oh, Tifa."
Tifa looked up at Scarlet, breathing hard, panting, and crying loudly.
Scarlet giggled, bouncing a little where she sat. "We're going to have so much fun!"