A/N: Yay, another twofer. This one is a bit more on the depressing side, but hey, life ain't all fun and games. Still, I think there's a sufficient amount of fluff to balance it out.
Once again, the time has come to read, enjoy, learn a new word, and review!
WORD OF THE DAY
Bivouac (10/29)
n. 1. An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter. intransitive verb: 1. To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.
Gloaming (10/31)
n. Twilight; dusk.
Journeying around the world back in the pre-Meteor days had been difficult. For all the fronts of encouraging globalization that Shinra claimed, the roads—if they could be considered such—between each town had been arduously difficult to traverse.
There were no motels along the way, usually the closest one being on the outskirts of a town or city with grand expanses of wilderness trapped in between. Dirty, sweaty, and often bloody, the would-be heroes often found themselves forced to bivouac in the most uncomfortable of places. Like tonight.
Tifa sneezed with a grimace as she pulled her thin blanket tighter around herself. The night had been especially cold for some reason or another and the first hour of her two-hour watch went by miserably slow. She consoled herself with the fact that the sullen gloaming that had fallen around her meant that dawn was nearly here. After all, they always did say that the darkest time of the day is the moment just before sunrise.
Her eyes traced the twinkling dance of the stars in the sky, a throbbing ache suddenly building beneath her ribs. She couldn't help but wonder if they as a team, as friends, had hit their darkest moment yet—their black before daybreak. If losing a friend, an almost-sister, didn't constitute as the darkest moment they would yet face, she hated to think what would.
But, that meant that the night would only lighten, didn't it? That the challenges they faced from here on out would just get easier? A single tear slipped from their confines behind her eyelids and were soon joined by a torrent. Even if that was true, she would rather face the blackest of nights than to lose her.
Tifa started when she felt the soft weight of another blanket draping over her shoulders. She looked up in surprise to find Cloud's solemn eyes studying her intently. Her eyes turned away quickly, and she rubbed at them with a dry chuckle.
"I got something in my eyes." It was a pitiful attempt at a cover-up, but she didn't really care.
She felt him sit down next to her and, for a brief moment that stretched into eternity, a tense silence fell between them. She started examining the skies again and just when she was about to ask him what he was doing up, he broke the truce first.
"I miss her too."
His softly spoken words triggered a clenching wrench of her heart and the tears began flowing once again. She struggled to keep her sobs quiet, but she lost control when he pulled her into her arms and tucked her head beneath his chin. Her hands tightly grabbed at the front of his shirt as she poured her sorrow into her tears.
"I miss her so much!" she wept, making sure that the fabric of his shirt absorbed much of the sound so that she wouldn't waken the others.
"I know. It's okay to cry."
And so she did. She wept and she sobbed until there were no tears left to cry. It was a liberating feeling that she didn't have to be strong for everyone else. That she could let her pain shine through her tough exterior. That she could hurt as much as anyone.
Her sobbing eventually died down and even her sniffles calmed. For a moment, all she felt was warmth and security before she belatedly remembered with a bit of embarrassment exactly who it was that was providing her such warmth and security.
She pulled back slightly, surprised when Cloud's hold didn't loosen. After a moment's hesitation, she gave in to temptation and buried herself deeper into his warmth. Even if it was just a way of comforting her and even if this would be the only time he would ever hold her like this, this one moment made all the suffering worth it.
"She's watching over us, you know." His chest rumbled when he spoke.
Tifa nodded. "Yeah. I know."
She smiled when his arms tightened around her.
A/N: So I felt like it was definitely time to get some acknowledgment of Aeris going on here. I honestly think I portrayed Tifa's heartbreak over Aeris' death quite accurately in that you're gonna get super close to anyone you spend so much time with. As for Cloud, although the movie shows him on a major guilt-trip, I think he was never portrayed as that debilitated and guilt-ridden in the game. In fact, after the whole Mideel fiasco, he seemed to open up and definitely appeared more confident of himself.
Anyway, that was my rant of the day. Major thanks to all my readers!
Shout-outs go out to the following: Sacred3, ishmaranara, Qwi-Xux, et cetera et cetera, MissGreenPeace, randomcat23, butterflybookmark, JingYee, HesitantPen13, h. luna, darkangel8694
