Title: Carry on, my Wayward Cloud

Summary: Tifa hates Sephiroth, and so does Cloud. Tifa misses home. Cloud missed home.

Rating: K+

Tags: Cloud, Tifa, minor CloTi (mostly Gen)

Warnings: Angst/slightly hinted delusional desire, implied depression and unresolved anger

She says he should hate him for what he did. He agrees.

She cries about the loss of their home, and he nods.

She says she misses home. He pauses. It is slow, but he nods again.

The dark of night touches their skin with cool breath and she says it makes her miss the cold of the mountain; every breeze causes her to remember how peaceful it was.

But in the dark, she never sees the cruelty of his blue eyes.

For him, it was home, in a way. It was home because it was where he was from. But it is not the same for him. It was never a place he remembers fondly.

He holds her closer, tighter, unafraid to let go.

He never tells her that he hates him for different reasons.

He hates him for himself. Because of him it was he who had lived to see another day. Day after day of torture. Waking up with no hope. Lost in a sea of could bes and should bes, only hoping for would bes.

And if home is where hearts form, then surely that place was his home - cold, abandoned, and ruthless; an isolated prison that formed him in his primitive and adolescent years.

He misses that place because a small, fledgling portion of his unsettled desire for revenge wants to be the one to burn away the waste of his memories. He wants to let them know how he felt, but he cannot. They are already dead. He is not.

His bottom lip numbs as his teeth gnaw at the flesh. A heavy breath leaves him as he pulls her closer and she shivers as she feels it on her neck and when his lips move to her hair.

He has never forgotten how no one stood up for him in that town. Only his mother, who loved him beyond words. An entire childhood wasted, an entire town that could have loved him. A whole village that did not.

Not even the girl clutching him for comfort, the girl who lived next to him for nearly a decade and a half, the girl who smiled at everyone. Everyone but him. At least, until recently.

His fingers struggle to form fists as he eases air in-and-out of his lungs.

In some ways, he appreciates it. He acknowledges that if his life had been any different, he might not be what he is now. Yet still, the anger stings. His eyes close as he relaxes and lets himself move freely, think freely, live freely.

He feels the heat of her cheeks as he plays with her hair, tucking some locks behind her ear and tracing the shell of flesh. She turns and when he palms her cheeks, she finally sees his eyes.

They are not the same as hers. She is indignant. She is furious. He is distant. He is suffocating.

Words fail her and she is puzzled. He never tells her that when he sees her, every single time, he sees the embodiment of change. That this is not the same girl who was his neighbor. That she has grown up.

And yet a part of him never forgets the girl who only knew her father's words. Stay away from him. He wonders why he has yet to mature. Yet to forgive. A sigh breaks loose, and he lets go and faces away from her.

She tugs on his arm, still confused. Why? What's wrong? Neither question leaves her lips. Instead, she forces him to look at her. Instead, she meets his shaking with a kiss.

It is chaste and pure with emotion.

He wants to kiss back, but she pulls off. His fingers twitch and his form still shakes. She never asks. He never tells.

She knows his demons are different than hers. But she knows he needs the same kind of love. He is angry, a strange sort of angry. She does not understand why, but his emotions are his own.

He will tell her when he is ready, she believes. Until then, she will hold him just.

His eyes close, and buries her face in his neck. Demons may never die, but they are both alive. She promises him that she will be there.

A tear slips from his eyes, and she only knows this because it falls on her head. Her hands instinctively move up, brushing his hair so that she can look at him again.

There is no love between them, he thinks. But, he muses, he does not need love to want her in his life.