Disclaimer: FF7 doesn't belong to me
AN: This is just a small something that wouldn't leave me until I wrote it down (although I'm a die-hard Cloti-fan XD)
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He hears her crying at night sometimes. The sound is muffled and sounds too much like Zack's suppressed screams back when they were trapped in Hojo's lab that he usually just blocks it out or decides to take a ride on Fenrir.
When he comes back home in the morning to get his list of deliveries she's usually behind the counter of the bar already, all fake smile and shining eyes.
"Cloud," she acknowledges, glancing at him.
"Tifa," is his only reply because he really doesn't know what else to say. He doubts that she wants to be reminded that her eyes are still red and she's been cleaning the same glass since he entered their makeshift home.
She silently hands him a slip of paper and he takes a quick look at the deliveries that are due today.
"Will you make it home for dinner?" she asks, her tone a curious blend of bitterness and hope. "The children would be happy." She doesn't acknowledge that she, too, would be happy. There's so much she doesn't acknowledge anymore.
"Probably not," he admits. The package's destination is in Junon and he'll probably be on road for a few hours.
"I see," she responds slowly, because – really – what else is there to say anymore. She has all but given up on the small hope that blooms and withers with his rare smiles and his frequent departures.
The light in her eyes diminishes to a low spark that seems so fragile and easily blown away. And sometimes – more often lately – she wonders why she still waits for him to pick up the phone or to come home before she falls asleep tiredly. Because staying up until four in the morning seems more and more draining and useless and she really doesn't know how to make him stay anymore.
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"Which one will it be? A memory or us?"
A memory he wants to reply. Because the memory is so disturbed and sad that he cannot possibly make it worse anymore.
Even he – fractured and broken and rebuilt with burning macro and a false personality – realizes, though, that this is one of those things that shouldn't be said aloud.