Everything

By icecreamlova

A/N: The prompt was: "Cloud and Tifa are not in love." And, to keep it from being total angst and cliché, I added: "Not because of Aerith."

- : -

No one else understands.

Tifa sees the bright, expectant smiles the rest of AVALANCHE give her when Cloud gets home a little early, eager to see her again, and Denzel, or Marlene if she's staying--still pretty common, with Barret not quite settled. She notices the satisfaction, like a circle-come-full, like everyone's finally achieved the fairytale ending that had to come after saving the world.

She wants to tell them: It's not like that.

She reads it in romance novels -- when she has time enough to smile at the antics the protagonists get up to. Sometimes it's movies. But they're all the same.

The hero and heroine save the world. They fall in love, before or after said deed. They get married. They have children. They live happily ever after.

But in their case, the hero and heroine DIDN'T fall in love, and the heroine died -- attached to someone else already in the lifestream -- though the other three are still close in sight.

The rest of AVALANCHE... even the Turks... they don't understand.

She and Cloud live together; they watch over Denzel, and Marlene, and the others' kids when they feel like taking a break. They're all but married in name, and they're happy.

But they are not in love. Not romantically. Sometimes, Cloud comes to her in the night, or she beckons to him, because they're human and their bodies BURN, because she admits Cloud is handsome, and Cloud never denies that she's hot.

But they are not in love.

Tifa tried to explain this to Shera, once.

"I know that, except for the kids, I'm the most precious thing to him," she had said.

"It's about time he caught on," Shera said.

And the older woman had LOOKED at her in that specific way. Shera was happy, in love with Cid, and she would be pregnant a month after their conversation. She wanted the world to share her joy.

And Tifa said, "He's not in love with me."

"Oh, Tifa," said Shera. "Give him some--"

"I don't WANT him to be in love with me," Tifa said, before Shera could get the wrong idea.

Shera leaned close. "You know Aerith would have wanted him to move on. Wanted you to move on. We all know that."

Or even with Yuffie:

"When are you guys getting married?" asked Yuffie.

Tifa had been cleaning the bar. "Me and Cloud?"

The ninja rolled her eyes. "Who else?"

Tifa shrugged.

"Jeez," Yuffie said, leaning her chin on the arms folded in front of her on the bar, "don't sound so excited about it. Speaking of which, where is the chocobo-head? Did he leave you and the kids again?"

"He wouldn't," Tifa said. "This family means more to him than anything else."

"It's about time," grumbled Yuffie, the same way as Shera had. "C'mon, give me a date. Day? Month? YEAR?"

Tifa sighed, and gave the same answer as she had to Shera. "It's not like that, Yuffie. He lives with me. He loves Marlene and Denzel. But he's not in love with me!"

"'Cause that's why you're living together like a young couple and raising a family," Yuffie said, rolling her eyes.

And Tifa realized that Yuffie didn't get it. Yuffie, Shera, and the rest of the world. She still feels guilt for Aerith's demise, because she was part of the group and could have DONE something, anything, even if that action would have failed. Cloud feels it too, the burning of 'What If I'd...?'

After Meteor, everyone else in AVALANCHE thought she had been so stuck because she couldn't compete with a tragic heroine, and Cloud had been stuck because he couldn't leave behind the memory of a love, but IT WASN'T LIKE THAT. Tifa wants to tell them: Aerith was in love with Zack. I saw them at the church door, too, across the trench of water. She loved him. And Cloud loved Aerith, but he wasn't IN LOVE with her any more than he is with me.

Why does it mean that THAT love, the sort Cloud had for Aerith, was any less than romantic love? Why is it that only ROMANTIC LOVE could have triggered the sort of guilt he feels? Do you think, Tifa wants to ask, he'd have recovered faster if Aerith was a sister? Best friend?

And Tifa wants to ask: "Why do you think that, if he hadn't loved Aerith, he would be in love with me? Why do you think it is either-or?"

Tifa wasn't lying to Shera. She KNOWS how important she is to Cloud, especially now. They're just not in love.

When Tifa was a little girl, she dreamed of princes, and chocobo-haired boys rushing to her rescue. She's older now. She's seen much more. And she doesn't WANT THAT with Cloud.

The sort of connection she has, she wants to tell Yuffie and Shera, is like red threads drawing them together.

Everyone assumes they're in love. That romantic love's why they're living together. That it's why they raise Denzel together, now that Cloud's able to function for himself again.

But it's not.

It's their closeness. Barring the children, no one else will be closer to Cloud than Tifa; no one else will be closer to Tifa than Cloud.

It's not ROMANTIC LOVE. Just love.

(And Tifa doesn't understand why everyone sees that sort of closeness as the urge to turn to each other at night and...)

Tifa and Cloud are like two halves of one another, now, and frankly that's all Tifa wants. She wouldn't give the world for more, not anymore. She is happy as she is. Tifa remembers old books about how marriage started as an economic thing, and even though it's not any longer, she doesn't think a husband and wife in that romantic sense could be closer than she and Cloud are.

No one else gets it, about Tifa Lockheart and Cloud Strife and a happy life and family without romantic love. Maybe, someday, a man will catch her eye, and it might even be Cloud, but she's not holding her breath. Watching full year slip by followed by stuffed-to-the-brim full year, Tifa thinks: I'm happy.

"Forget it," Tifa said to Shera, taking a sip of tea and moving onto other subjects.

To Yuffie: "Patience is a virtue." Then she kept wiping the bar until she could see her reflection in it, smiling the smile that came when Cloud brought Denzel home from school.

So WHAT, if no one else understands?

It's enough.

- : -

END