Notes: This is an AU.
Summary: If he could, he would take it all back because it would mean he could tell her he loved her and see her smile, kiss her, and hold her.
Warning: Mature content. Character death. Hints of rape.
He navigates carefully on the snow covered streets late at night. He doesn't push the speed because he is not at all in a hurry to get home. As he stops at a red light, he wonders if Tifa would be angry that he didn't pick up on her phone call again. The blonde sighs because he knows she wouldn't be angry but simply hurt.
Cloud, a man of twenty four with spiky blonde hair and striking blue eyes, found himself wondering why he kept hurting his girlfriend. He loved her, there was no doubt about it, yet his actions often proved otherwise.
Outside of his apartment building complex, police cars and an ambulance line the street. Confusion enters him and then he shrugs it off, thinking maybe it might've been a prank call. He brushes past the officers and heads up to his apartment. Cloud's brow furrows when police keep coming down. His heart hammers when he starts to think that perhaps, they're coming down from his apartment.
He swallows and shakes his head. Tifa could take care of herself and nothing was wrong. That's what he told himself. But still, Cloud found himself pumping his legs faster to get up the stairs. His mind was reeling. Things were perfectly fine. He pats his phone in his pocket; she just called him merely two hours ago. Nothing could happen in that time to her right?
He makes the last step on his floor and his heart stops. Police were coming from his apartment. His mind blanks and Cloud finds himself running towards the open door. Police push him back and he screams at them. "That's my girlfriend!"
His girlfriend. Tifa. Suddenly as he sees her, he wishes he could've said that she was his wife.
The couches he and Tifa had spent months looking for were tattered and stained with blood. The floor he remembered her cleaning just yesterday held a pool of blood. Things were toppled over like picture frames and books.
Her legs were seen from behind the coffee table, a table pushed closely to the couch. She wasn't wearing any socks so he suspected that she had been home and in her pajamas for a while. She laid still and he found himself frozen.
There was blood on her legs and the silky blue nightgown she wore had been torn to shreds. Cloud could remember her wearing that blue nightgown on the night of his birthday two years ago to seduce him. His mind quickly wondered why she was suddenly wearing it again.
"Tifa…"
Her eyes were closed and her face held a bruise on her left cheek. Her lips were dry and there was a stain of blood at the corner of it. A police snapped a photo and Cloud felt the urge to punch him! Her breasts spilled out from the gown and the lacy underwear she had put on had been pushed hurriedly aside. How dare the police snap a photo of her in this state!
Cloud felt a stinging in his eyes and he bit his lip. Contain the tears! He surged forward and knelt in the pool of blood, not caring if it stained his jeans and he wouldn't be able to wash it. Tifa normally did the laundry anyways. But now…she would never be able to. He reached forward to pick her up, shake her awake but the police quickly pulled him back.
He struggled in the arms of three men. "Tifa!" He hoped she could hear him and open her eyes! Or move her fingers, anything to tell him her heart still held a beat! Cloud moved desperately until finally, perhaps in pity, the police let him go so he could hold her.
She was slick with the paint of blood and she had gotten so cold. Cloud's mind struggled to remember when was the last time he had held her. It had been too long….
His shaking fingers brushed the hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear, only to find that blood had caught onto his fingers from a wound at her head. Blue eyes looked down at her and questioned so many things.
When was the last time he had kissed her?
When was the last time she had smiled at him? He smiled at her?
How long has it been since she rested in bed next to him, their arms wrapped securely around each other and their breathing lulling each other to sleep?
How long has it been since they made love?
So many questions with only one answer…too long ago. He had been too caught up Zack's death that he has neglected the one that held his heart.
His tears made its way down his face and fell upon her, where he finally noticed the dry tracks of her own tears she had shed. After that, it became all a blur. Someone had pried her away from him and he had been shuffled into an ambulance beside her, where she remained unmoving. The machine attached to her gave him an indication that she was still in there somewhere…just lost.
Cloud sat idly in a chair, flipping his phone between his hands. Should he listen to the voicemail she left him? It would be comforting to hear her voice again while he waited. It would be nice to know that when she left the voicemail for him merely a few hours ago, she had been alive and well. It could comfort him while he waited to know if she was okay. An uncertainty that needed the comfort of her voice.
Cloud pulled open his phone and clicked the button that took him to his voicemail. He pressed it against his ear just in time to hear an automatic voice telling him there was one new message. His heart twisted in anxiety. What would her last words be to him just before he found her in a state that only told him that she experienced the worst crime committed to a woman?
The message that opened up broke him.
"CLOUD!" Raw fear and panic. Sounds of broken glass, a muffled cry. Pounding, perhaps from the drop of a book. A choked sob and a grunt, perhaps when she might've landed a hit on her assaulter.
Scrambles. "Cloud! Help me, please!" Perhaps she didn't know that he hadn't picked up. Perhaps she had the comfort of pretending that he had picked up and heard her plea and was rushing to save her.
The screech of something pulled away from its position, like nails on a chalkboard or a chair being pulled out. A loud thud of a body falling. More choking sobs.
"No, no, no!"
A rip. A slap. A cry. A choked gasp, the struggle for air. An impatient grunt and another loud thud. The cries afterward were much softer, soft whispers.
"Cloud…" She whispered his name and it sounded like she was tenderly saying it as an endearment. More muffled grunts that he knew was not hers.
A tortured cry of pain that wrecked him. It was torturing him and yet he could not stop the pain. He sat frozen listening. Finally, a scramble and it was quiet saved for her whimpers and soft cries.
Sniffling. "Cloud…."
Was she thinking of how he failed her? How he failed to save her?
"I love you…" Her broken voice whispered. How he wished that he had heard her say it in real life, without the barrier of the phone.
He listened to the emptiness of the phone after the message stopped playing. He stared blankly at the wall, feeling so numb. Cloud remained motionless until the doctor came out. The doctor held a hooded look in his eyes, something that told him whatever the news was he wasn't going to like it. This was a man that was accustomed to more deaths than lives saved.
"How is she?" Cloud choked out.
The doctor shakes his head. "The damage done to her brain is too severe. I'm sorry, the surgery failed. She'll only have tonight left…I'm sorry."
Only tonight….Cloud wishes that in the last night Tifa has on Earth was full of sweet and good memories. The past year has been painful for the both of them, more painful because he added to it. He wishes that the last year for her had been full of him and them getting engaged and married.
He sits next to her at her bedside. She's ashen and the color of the bruise looks sickening. She's barely breathing. Only tonight…
She comes in later. She was wearing the same outfit he had only taken off a few hours ago. Her light brown hair is down from its trademark braid in a messy heap at her shoulders. She stands at the doorway with a hand to her mouth, tears running over it like a river over rocks and her glistening emerald eyes stare disbelieving. Cloud glances at her and when he does, he feels nauseous. If he hadn't been with her, maybe he could've been there to save Tifa. If he hadn't been with her this past year, he would've been able to create happy memories with Tifa.
Zack, Aeris, Tifa, and him would always go out together. Aeris and Tifa were friends although they were never particularly close. Zack was his best friend and when he died in a car accident, Cloud had found comfort in another woman's arms. Particularly, he found comfort in Zack's girlfriend's arms. They had both been mourning and they found solace in each other in the knowledge that they had lost someone so close to them.
It wasn't that Tifa didn't comfort him. It was the fact that she wasn't as close as Zack and did not feel such an impending loss. He wanted someone to feel the same loss and void in his chest. And he never meant to have an affair but they were the only things that made him forget.
Cloud could remember the night Tifa found out. She had cried and ran out of the apartment. She was gone for a week and he couldn't particularly remember if he was worried or not. However, when she came back she looked solemn and said she would forgive him. She wanted to make the relationship work and her forgiveness made him disgusted with himself. The disgust with himself led him to continue his affair and it hurt Tifa that he never met her halfway in her attempts to fix their relationships.
He feels the painful monster of guilt inside of him and disgust in tidal waves. He turns his back to Aeris. Cloud holds Tifa's cold hand in his and stares longingly at her face. In his memory he can envision her sparkling ruby eyes and her wide warm smile. He starts wishing.
But by the end of the night, at the start of dawn of a new day, none of his wishes come true. He finds himself broken and alone. The comforting sound of the machine that measured her heart turns into a screeching halt and he knows that he has lost her forever. She's lost forever.
His voice is thick with guilt and he finds it difficult to talk, much less breathe, through his tears but he manages to say it clearly. "I love you too…Tifa."
Notes: Any requests? Have an idea and you want me to write it? Send me a review with the request and it'll be fulfilled!
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