A/n: Really sorry for the very long delay. Hope you like this chapter.

Magic of the Stars

Solitude holds no will to set me free. Into its trap, I let myself be lured, and trapped, I breathe air tainted with regret. It's heavy and I feel my lungs shake underneath the staggering force of it, battling in their own subtle way for the life of my despairing sanity.

My sanity is weak without yours.

And I am nothing without you.

I step into the middle of the garden and my body stiffens when I feel the overwhelming sense of loss again, building up inside like the deadly heat of a volcano ready to erupt. The pain in my arm lingers still, but my mind is numb to it now as the deeper, darker agony of staggering emotions slowly spreads. I know I will lose. I know that nothing is left for me to win but the shred of hope that slipped from between my fingers when I slipped from between yours.

Hope has abandoned me and light has no rays to offer, but in the darkness of my new life, I find the light of your heart, feeding me strength and filling me with hope.

The number of times that I have dreamt of you is the number of times I dreamed. Every second, my mind sees you and my heart feels you and my soul calls your name. I have seen you when my eyes are open and I have seen you when sleep comes to take me away from the cruelty of this world.

My dreams are filled with your eyes and your lips, with the smile that paints miracles on your face and I realize that now, wide awake and waiting for hope to find its way to me, the miracles flash again. And as I grip onto the fleeting warmth, onto the glittering images of memories and dreams that carry your face, I see the gift of the stars flicker upon your lips.

And I breathe.

The darkness was not strong enough anymore, too weak to stop me from gathering the strength to form a smile triggered by the one I saw on you.

And in that split second, beautiful peace floods into me, gushing into my soul like water though a broken dam. The warmth is so quick to take over, so unbridled that the pain is gone in an instant and the sorrow quickly disintegrates and basking in that newfound feeling, I want nothing else to matter.

But I can't do it because it does matter that I…

…miss your smile

She waited for him, framed in midnight and moonlight and rain, worriedly aware that she was pressing for answers he wasn't really ready to give. Cloud could see it in her eyes and as he gazed, drawn in by the shifting hues of mahogany and gold and terrified by the prospect of a rejection capable of destroying what was left of him, he wondered if there was any hope left for him with the angel in his arms.

Her hands still chilled in his, he squeezed tighter, the concern in his eyes dissolving into anxiety when the thought of her distance managed to leak into his mind. He needed to keep her close or his heart would stop beating altogether. It only beat for her anyway.

I didn't mean to hurt you, he pleaded to himself, a silent, desperate answer to the question she'd uttered moments ago.

The words stirred and churned in his mind, a broken record that kept building upon the agony already brewing inside him. There was no other answer. Nothing could justify the misery he'd put her through and the pain he'd poured generously into her when he disappeared. But somewhere in his mind, her survival registered and Cloud understood that only one thing could have kept her strong enough to withstand everything he'd caused.

Tifa loved him too. And she loved him so much more than either of them had thought possible.

"But I didn't die, Tifa," he explained quietly, remembering the echo of her screaming voice in his mind, shouting his name when the explosion took him away, however briefly, from the land of the living. "I chose life. That's where you were."

At his words, Tifa hesitated, her eyes shifting away from his then back again. Cloud felt her hands sliding from his and instantly clamped tighter onto them.

"I was here when you didn't want it, right?"

He smiled but it was miserable. There was truth in her words.

She freed her hands from his grip and he felt her fingers, a moment later, against his jaw, turning his eyes back to ones that were wide and earnest and smeared with tears and hope. She was waiting for him to admit it, to agree, to say the words that were both lies and truth. Tifa was right. She was here. It was why he couldn't bear the thought of living in a weaker man's body.

"Right, Cloud?" Her voice was soft but it startled him all the same.

He turned his face into her hand and skimmed his lips over her fingertips, eyes closed, grateful for what he had at that exact moment to think of wanting more. When she shuddered, he smiled and lifted clear blue eyes to the misty amber of her gaze.

And he let himself drown.

"You were here when I was dying, Tifa. I didn't want you to watch it happen."

She frowned, reading into him, believing his words even when she was struggling to understand them. Her hand flitted back down to her side and Cloud let her fingers go but refused to break eye contact. She didn't have to listen to him to believe him. She only had to look at him, to truly see him and she would know. He didn't doubt that Tifa would understand past the words he spoke. She was the one who taught him how to do it.

When the silence pressed on, he felt himself grow tense and restless. His patience and his strength and his hope were running thin, and though he could afford to let patience and strength fade away, the loss of hope would simply mark the end of whatever existence he deemed himself worthy of.

He didn't care to exist in the world if he couldn't exist in Tifa's heart.

"Do you understand, Tifa?" he pressed, gently. Tifa gazed at him, lost in the intensity of his gaze then blinking back into the present, she dropped hers to the ground.

Something about the look in her eyes tugged at his mind, drawing a frown to his face. There was something else, past the sadness and the frustration and the tiny flickers of hope. And even though he wasn't sure what it was, he knew it didn't belong there.

"I was dying when you weren't here. I didn't want you to let it happen." Her eyes found his again and there was strength in there, gathering behind the watery sheen glistening against the gold. "Do you understand, Cloud?"

Because she saw pain flash across his face she turned from him and simply looked at the church doors remembering how rigid and suffocating that barrier of worn wood had seemed when Cloud was on the other side of it.

"It hurt so much to think of you…." She hesitated, seemingly breaking down all over again. Her voice was cracking under the pressure of the tears lodged in her throat, and she breathed deeply determined to keep them at bay, determined to stay strong, to show him that she was and had always been strong.

"So I didn't."

When his hands found her arms and clasped onto them, the sobs pushed harder and she had to grit her teeth, to fist her hands tightly till her nails dug into her palms just to keep herself from falling apart.

"Tifa," he sighed.

"But it even hurt not to think of you. …"

Her voice held that same, elusive quality he'd seen in her eyes moments ago, something that simmered just below the strength and the fear mixing wondrously when she spoke. And again, it made him tense and wary and even more uncertain.

"Tifa, don't."

She freed herself from his hands and stepped away from him, needing the distance, then turned and met his gaze evenly.

"I couldn't do it…make myself think of think of you and I couldn't stop doing it," she finished softly, gathering her composure one more time now that she'd stepped away from him.

"I know, Tifa. I understand."

The silence fell thick and sudden in a single moment and Cloud felt the brush of alarm in his chest bubbling up his throat. He strained to listen to her breathing, soft and even through the stillness of the night and waited for her to break it all because he couldn't.

For a moment, Tifa was a million miles away instead of just a few feet, and for a second, her heart was farther away from his hands than it had been his entire life.

His eyes were wide and distraught, but Tifa was quiet and beneath his troubled gaze, still. And past the surface, deep inside her, he watched the churning waves of clashing emotions crash against her heart, a storm he'd been too cowardly to confront before and too scared to do so now.

"I don't think you do."

Guilt, he thought abruptly, alarm erupting in his chest. Her voice sounded like guilt.

She spoke with a heart-breaking softness and a tragic finality that was so intense, he thought he could hear heart shatter. He reached out to her with a trembling hand, needing the comfort of contact then dropped it to his side when he realized that he had none to offer back.

The quiet of the night pressed on despite the rain, the tension with it, a heavy, powerful weight, so thick, that a knife could have sliced through it and split the very air around them in two. And then her voice, strong as a warrior's and soft as an angel's forced the nearly tangible tension to shatter.

"Cloud?" she called him softly and he would have smiled if he wasn't so terrified of what she would say.

"What is it, Tifa?"

She stood still, quiet at first, afraid to look up at him.

"I wanted to hurt you back," she confessed, her voice quiet and strained, a heart-wrenching mix between sorrow and shame. At her sides, her hands shook, curled into white-knuckled fists and she stood rigid with her head hung low, shivering and shaking with a strange fear that Cloud hadn't known he could put in her.

It didn't surprise him. She rarely did anymore.

"It's okay," he whispered quietly, his heart breaking at the heart-broken image she displayed.

He made a move towards her reaching out, but she took a step away from him, her arms still trembling when she curved them around her waist. She hugged herself tightly, breathing slowly to keep the tears at bay.

He hated that he couldn't find the courage to touch her.

"I wanted to forget you." Her voice was cracking beneath the emotional pressure, choking up and the sly, smoky fingers twisted around his heart, dug deeper.

"It's okay." He spoke a little more forcefully, tensely, curling his own fingers into fists.

He silently cursed his helplessness, the coldness of the things he'd done to both of them and struggled to fight the dormant demons of guilt that were stirring in his mind again.

And he hated that he couldn't fight them without dragging her along for the ride.

"I wanted to hate you."

Her voice was trapped in tears, tight and whispery and he watched as she lifted quivering hands, slowly, and pressed her face into them, hiding from the world, from him and still being strong.

And he hated that he couldn't stop the tears she wouldn't shed.

He only ever wanted her to smile.

"It's okay."

Because he was afraid he would lose it, he spoke the words through clenched teeth, and his fists tightened, short nails biting into his palms. He was desperate to make her hear him now, because he was on the verge of giving up altogether. "I understand."

"Cloud?" His name came out in a raw, exhausted whisper laced with tears that she wouldn't let fall, and twined with anguish she wouldn't set free, and he looked up to watch her breathing slowly, keeping the tears and the anguish at bay, being his strength when he was being her weakness.

He stepped closer, just a few paces, both physical and emotional exhaustion creeping up on him. And dared to hope when she didn't step away, when she stood her ground, dropped her hands and lifted her head.

The silence that came this time, when her liquid gaze leveled on his was different. Exhaustion was evident in her eyes, an extreme weariness that went far beyond the physical. And the desire to put it all behind her, to just start over was leaking through the cracks of guilt and tension he'd seen before.

And when he looked at her, into her, and saw more peace than sorrow and more of Tifa than of the miserable stranger that had her face. He stilled when she held his gaze firmly, when she breathed words laced with fatigue and when she turned his world into heaven.

"Don't let me."

His heart jumped at her words, pounded a rapid rhythm against his chest. And then, she took a step toward him, hesitated for a lingering moment before she moved another, then stopped to look at him through the fluttering strands of hair swaying across her face, shaking too much to brush them away. "Okay?"

Eyes softening, he gazed, all the exhausting emotions churning inside him slowly fading away behind the quiet, limitless happiness expanding in his chest. She was terrified, Cloud could see it in her eyes, genuinely afraid that he would simply leave after the terrible things she'd confessed.

And he thought it was beyond lovely as he walked over to her, that it was almost heartbreakingly sweet to know that she'd been fighting her own self for him. And that she was trusting him to fight with her.

"I don't need to, Tifa," he sighed, stopping right in front of her.

She kept her gaze fixed on his as he approached her, wide and afraid and trusting and hopeful. And he held her eyes with his when he lifted both hands to curl her hair behind her ears, watched them close reflexively when he swept his thumbs across her delicate cheekbones to wipe the tears that lingered there, then simply framed her face in his hands and leaned in to press his lips to her forehead.

"You never could hate me."

There was a fleeting touch of amusement in his words, a smile in his voice floating somewhere within the fatigue and it had her shifting beneath his lips, tilting her head up, tipping wet, curious eyes to all the blue, to find the sincerity of what he spoke resting softly in his gaze.

And Tifa saw it shining there, the smile and the amusement and the simple truth, and both stunned by the teasing reality of his statement and touched by the sincerity of his words, her eyes softened, the fear dropping in a flash and the tight line of her mouth transformed into a lovely smile, a soft curve of moist lips, a spark of magic, a miracle in the making that had the world and everything in it wasn't wet gold, and flowing silk and pretty, smiling lips, framed in midnight and moonlight and rain, melt away into oblivion

He remembered falling in love with that smile all those years ago, remembered how it reminded him of the sun that shone after a storm, or the full, midnight moon when it lit the sky up, how it sparkled like diamonds and twinkled like little, dancing stars filling the world with magic. And here he was, doing it all over again, his only regret the number of times he'd missed out on seeing that smile when the need to leave had become too overwhelming to fight.

So I'll spend those hours now, while I'm seeing your smile. I'll spend all those months in this one, magical moment, to make up for all those times I rejected what was prettier than the magic of the midnight sky.

I see it all in your smile, beautiful pathways open, flooding with light, and an iridescent road, illuminated by a sea of stars that beckons me to swim through it. And I see you there, standing at the end, waiting for me with the enchanting smile, the same one I'm watching now, resting upon your lips.

You were always waiting for me. Quietly. Patiently. Faithfully. Just waiting. Bearing the pain and the loneliness, sharing the pain and the loneliness that were nearly the destruction of my soul. I can feel my soul being revived when I'm here, adoring your smile, slowly lifting from the pits of the dark void that had grown inside me when I left you, to flow into every corner of my body.

You shine.

And I am only truly me when I'm seeing you shine. And its easier to be me now because I know that my eyes will always see the smile on your lips and you know that the smile on your lips is the reason for mine.

Don't you know how much I love your smile?