Thanks again to kelleyj17 for betaing!


Tifa looked back as she ran, and was greeted to darkness but for the yellow glow of the garage lights that dimly lit the alley in front of the open door. Where was Cloud? She turned her head again to keep herself from running into anything. Again she turned her head back to track her pursuer.

A silhouette sprinted from the light, and two blue pinpricks of light appeared.

Cloud had completely lost it. She looked ahead and turned onto a road that lead to the Plaza. It would give her a chance to lose him and maybe she could get to the police station. But if he was unhinged would he go on a murder spree in an attempt to get her? Tifa dodged into an alley. She would lose him through the road system.

She wondered if there was a place she could hide until reality caught up with him and he decided to flee the city, or until morning when she had a better chance at sneaking into Evan's agency...

What if Cloud murdered him and his family for being involved? What if he went after Evan if he couldn't get her? She would have to call Evan up after Cloud lost her; she didn't want to hear about him being slaughtered by a rampaging serial killer.

"Wait!" He was right behind her; he must have used the Time materia to catch up with her.

She braced herself for an attack. Tifa leapt onto the wall next to her and pushed herself upward, twisted about and landed the ball of her foot onto the back of Cloud's head. He stumbled forward, and she landed and headed in the opposite direction before he could turn around and run after her again.

"Sleep!"

Tifa felt the tingle of the spell envelop her, but nothing else happened. She looked down at her arm and stared at the ribbon she wore every day. He was going to sleep her like one of his victims and take her to some hidden place to be tortured before finally putting an end to it all.

She heard him shuffling behind her as she continued to flee. "Shit!" he hissed. His footfalls began to follow her again.

Her legs pumped faster, harder. She sprinted onto another road before he could get any closer. If Cloud had been an ordinary human he would have still been down on the floor of the bar with a concussion at the very least and possibly dead at worst. But he wasn't ordinary, and despite her loathing of cowardly fleeing there was no one to protect but herself, and Zangan always said that when facing against overwhelming odds it was best to live another day.

Oh, if only she had heeded that knowledge more often in the past.

His footsteps were in her ears again, closing in on her. She tensed after measuring where he was by the sound of his boots. She knew if she turned around right now those icy blue eyes would be burning a hole into her soul. Tifa sucked in a breath of air, took a step closer to the wall, then grabbed Cloud's arm as it reached out for her as she turned on her heel.

She used her momentum to throw him into the trashcans that she had passed seconds before, and then she was off again. It still hurt having to do that to Cloud, but right now she had to survive and he would recover from it as it was. There was the clattering of hollow metal and his pained groan, then the noise of the cans shifting about as he picked himself up.

Tifa went through another alley, then another with a quick turn. If she was fast enough he would have to guess which path she took. There was barely any light save for a dim streetlamp at the ends of the short alleys that assisted her vision. She didn't hear Cloud, and that alarmed her; he could have lost her, or he was watching from some unseen spot, waiting to attack again.

She turned onto a dilapidated looking street with ugly abandoned shops and warehouses. This might be a place she could hide, she thought to herself. There were plenty of places to hide if she could get into any of them, and he would have to either try to find her in here or assume she ran off again. A gamble, but she couldn't run forever.

She sprinted off and when she was at the middle of the street she tried the doors of several shops, but they were locked. Desperately she tried one last door before she would have to run off again; it thankfully creaked open. Tifa looked the way she came, saw no blue dots, then hurried inside.

It had been a simple shop from what she could tell with the near absolute darkness. The light from the door allowed her enough vision to make out debris and stairs leading to what she assumed was the living area above the abandoned shop.

She climbed the dark stairs and opened the door as quietly as she could. Tifa immediately noticed the windows on one side that allowed for the light of the streetlamps to illuminate the living space. A door led to a bedroom, and it had another door that led to a dark bathroom. She hid within, keeping still and watching and listening through the small crack in the door.

The minutes passed and her mind began to run. How could Cloud of all people have done such things? Why? It was so very unlike him. His eyes had never changed color like a facade melting away, and he hadn't been acting that particularly weird lately until the children murders began. Maybe he really was a psychopath?

No, a psychopath wouldn't have done the selfless things he had done in the past. It had to be the mako, it finally got to his brain. The thought made her feel a horrible woe; Cloud never had a chance after what Hojo had done to him. He had just been a ticking time-bomb, a victim who created other victims. It wasn't a fate he deserved.

She jumped as a ringing sound issued from her pocket. Tifa cursed under her breath as she pulled her cellphone out and muted it. She looked at who was calling her, and her blood froze in her veins.

It was Cloud.

She chewed her lip. He must have lost her if he was going to try to talk to her. Tifa listened for any noises outside just in case, then clicked accept.

"Tifa!"

She heaved a shaky sigh into the receiver. "Cloud, please just stop this..." she whispered in a wary voice.

"Teef. I-I have a lot of things I need to tell you about."

She snorted weakly in disbelief. "I bet you do. That's why you tried to sleep me, right? Because you have things to tell me about?"

There was a pause. "You wouldn't calm down," he said quietly.

A flicker of anger crossed her heart. "Calm down?" she hissed. "I find out you were the one who tried to kill Denzel, and you want me to calm down?"

"No, I did not!" His voice was much more firm and offended.

"Do you think I'm stupid, Cloud? Just because I...I trusted you." She squeezed her fist. "I held out hope you weren't doing these things."

"I don't think you're stupid...Please, can we just talk?" he pleaded.

"We're talking."

A short blow of air sounded in the receiver. "Face to face. Please."

She couldn't help but shudder. "No. No, I don't think that would be a good idea."

"I promise I'm not going to hurt you, Tifa. I wouldn't do that in the first place."

Tifa sighed and leaned her shoulder on the wall. Of course he'd use promises. The Cloud she knew was loathe to break them, but the Cloud she knew also didn't do what he had been doing. "I can't trust you as much as I wish I could, Cloud. Not anymore."

"I know things...look bad, but it's not quite what you think it is," he argued.

Her chuckle was bitter and humorless. "I don't know what you expect me to think when-"

She heard the dull sound of glass being crunched underfoot, and she stopped breathing as she took the phone from her ear. That sound came from the phone and below her. She strained to hear, and another tentative step, slow and quiet despite being almost inaudible came to her ear.

"Tifa?" came Cloud's whispered voice from her phone and right below her.

He was using her voice to pinpoint where she was.

She brought the phone up to her mouth. "Bastard," she hissed between clenched teeth before tossing the phone behind her. Tifa left the bathroom and heard footsteps quickly making their way up the stairs. She looked at the window in front of her, charged towards it and tried to open it.

A door opened and his heavy footsteps quickly made their way to the door of the bedroom she found herself in. Out of time, she smashed the weak glass with her foot, then kicked what remained on the bottom. The door slammed open and Cloud was reaching out to her, those alien eyes locked onto hers.

"Tifa!"

She somersaulted back quickly and her shoulder grazed the only piece of furniture in the room, a small dresser drawer. She stood and moved her feet apart, then picked up the wooden furniture and hurled it into his chest as heard as she could. He toppled over and shoved off the now busted dresser, splinters from broken drawers catching his arms and face.

Tifa took what little precious time she had and ran to the window. There was still glass bits here and there glistening on the bottom, but the scratches wouldn't be that deep, she estimated. She squeezed through as Cloud began to stand up again, the tiny shards scraping her exposed abdomen and her arms. She gritted her teeth and hung from the window by her gloved hands, took a quick breath, then fell.

She landed on her feet, turned around, and took off running after just a moment of recovery. Zangan had made sure she knew how to properly land after she told him about her disastrous trek on Mount Nibel when she was a young girl. Cloud had followed her up there, she remembered, just like he followed her now. He was always tenacious in that regard, it seemed.

Tifa felt his eyes on her as she jogged down the road. A warehouse caught her eye, and despite that horrible nightmare she had involving one she knew it was probably her best chance at stopping him. If she could use one of the metal hooks to knock him out or hit him with a barrel...

It wasn't like that would kill him.

The door was ajar already and a small chain rested on the ground nearby. She slipped inside and found the silhouette of the stairs twenty feet away. Carefully, Tifa made her way towards them and climbed the steps as quietly as she could. There were crates and steel barrels she could hide behind until she could attack.

She crouched behind a mess of crates and tucked herself behind a barrel as the door creaked ever so slightly open below her. She put a hand to her abdomen and stopped herself from hissing in pain; there was some glass bits embedded in her skin.

"Tifa, you can't keep running away." His wary voice echoed through the warehouse. "Let's go home..."

'Let's go home...' So he can butcher her in the garage with his swords. She kept her breathing shallow, short. Her eye peeked out of the gap between the barrel and a crate, watching his eyes dart about. He was watching the first floor, not what was above him.

It was hard to see much else, even though her eyes had mostly adjusted to the lack of light. The faintest glow issued from the large windows above but it was barely enough for her to see the outline of the objects littering the floor beyond, or the shadow of Cloud's spiky hair as he looked about for her.

"Please come out, Tifa. This isn't what you think it is."

She flexed her fists. She was growing angry with him. How was he supposed to justify torturing and murdering children, trying to kill Denzel? The thought made her scowl. After everything, he thought she was stupid or gullible enough to think he either had a good excuse or that she would come out of hiding so he could take care of her.

He sighed. "Please...This place isn't safe to be in as it is."

By her feet she found a little chunk of rusted metal, and she picked it up slowly. She wrapped her fingers around it and bit her lip. Tifa held her breath as she wound up her arm and threw it as hard as she could; she was rewarded with a loud clang near the opposite wall.

She heard Cloud move towards the sound, and as quickly as she could she charged and leapt from the railing after coming out of her hiding spot. Cloud turned around too late; she landed on top of him, making him stumble backwards as her thighs straddled his shoulders.

"Ti-ack!"

She pummeled his head as he fell back onto a few barrels. He violently shifted his shoulders as he twisted to the side and she was torn off of him as his hands peeled away her legs. He was panting.

"Damn it..."

Tifa skidded to a stop and flipped onto all fours, sneering up at those blue eyes she used to lose herself in. She tensed and he noticed she was about to attack. There was the distant sound of a siren growing closer outside. She just had to survive until the police reached the area, and this nightmare could end.

She rushed him, the light yellow glow emanating from her as she readied her spirit attack barely illuminating Cloud's bleeding face. His eyes were narrowed and his jaw was tight, and his arms came out in a defensive position. His eyes flickered side to side.

He didn't dodge the attack she unleashed on him that would have put a lesser man into a hospital. She slammed him into a stack of barrels and kicked at his chest, and his hand came out to grasp at her bicep. Tifa twisted her arm to dislodge his hand and pummeled him again before jumping from his chest and landing ten feet away in a crouch. She stood up and brought her fists back up.

She noticed finally that he hadn't brought his swords with him. It meant he wasn't planning to kill her right away after all. It was a terrible mistake on his part, much like his forgetfulness with the ribbon. In his haste to capture her, he hadn't thought things through. She knew it was dumb luck for her, but it only bought her and the police time.

Cloud's leg twitched, then he slowly stood up. She readied herself to attack again. He shook his head and sniffed back blood, then those blue eyes turned to stare at her. He was holding something long in his hand in the darkness. "That's enough of this little game, Tifa."

No. It couldn't be. She touched her arm. The ribbon was gone! Tifa took a step back as her eyes grew wide. "Don't you-"

Cloud thrust his hand out, and a green orb glowed on his leather gauntlet. A shimmer of green danced in his irises. "Sleep."

Tifa was suddenly falling forward, and the last thing she remembered were Cloud's arms catching her and that lonesome siren wail coming closer.