A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed: Creative Spark, NailoSyanodel, Kisdota-The Freak Gamer, vx-Luna-xv, Sigbru, midnitestarz, koalababay, crystalstars88, Iskra revoir, P.P.V.V., Drink. Juice, tifa07, Amos Whirly, Echobrain, punkiemonkie, iRathiest, MyfinalfantasyVII, San Hayashi, kissychan, cloudlover2989, and Valentine'sNinja.
Sniff. Sniiiiff. A small groan followed the thick sniffles coming from the couch in the living room. Cloud shut the laundry room door and set the package in his arms at the bottom of the stairs. He'd finished his deliveries early--rather, had pushed some deliveries back so he could come home early. He could hear the sounds of people talking in the bar, the clank of ice being dropped into a glass.
A long, hacking cough came from the living room, and Cloud's forehead pinched into a frown. He looked into the room to see Marlene on the couch, propped up with a pillow. The television from the guest room had been brought downstairs and set on the table, angled so Marlene could see it. She was watching an old movie and drinking a tall glass of juice.
Cloud stepped into the room and Marlene's head turned, her eyes lighting up when she saw him. "Cloud!"
Her voice sounded just as muffled as it had when he'd left that morning, thanks to her clogged nose. "Hey. How're you feeling?"
"I'm fine," she said, but it came out more as, "I'b fide." She tried to sniff again, then sighed. "Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow so I can go back to school."
"Mm." Cloud's reply was noncommittal. He walked toward the couch and sat on the end of it. "Did you finish the homework Denzel brought you yesterday?"
"Yup." She started coughing again, covering her mouth with her arm, her small body wracking with the force of it. She sounded a lot worse than she had during the night, and that had been enough to keep both him and Tifa awake a good portion of the time. "I've got to get better soon. Kiri's birthday is in four days and I haven't got her present yet!"
"Yeah? Any ideas about what you want to get her?"
"There's a really pretty necklace of a blue flower at Ms. Ilis's store. I think Kiri would really like it, and I have enough gil saved to get it," Marlene replied. "I was going to go buy it yesterday but I was sick."
"Cloud, you're home early!"
Cloud turned as Tifa came into the room, a tired smile on her face. She paused in front of him to claim a kiss before stepping over to Marlene and laying her wrist on her forehead. "You're still pretty hot, sweetie. Finish that juice and I'll get you another cloth, okay?" Tifa smoothed Marlene's hair back from her forehead.
Cloud followed Tifa back into the bar. Lunch had just ended, so the bar was pretty empty. "Is she okay?" Cloud asked, trying not to let any of his worry into his voice.
Tifa ran a washcloth under the water. "I think she's fine. She just has a bit of a nasty cold. I'm sure coming back from Costa del Sol back into the lovely weather here had something to do with it. It's just that time of year." She got a piece of ice out of the icebox on the counter and folded the washcloth around it. "She'll be better soon." She rested a hand on Cloud's arm. "Kids get colds, Cloud."
It had been years since Cloud had gotten a normal cold. The Mako in his body prevented most illnesses, with the obvious exception of Geostigma--but that was caused by Jenova cells, not a virus. He couldn't really even remember what it was like to get sick. Maybe that, or maybe the memory of the Stigma, always made him more concerned when one of his family fell ill.
He took the folded washcloth from Tifa, who squeezed his arm reassuringly. He went back into the living room and put the cool cloth across Marlene's forehead. She smiled at him and said, "Thanks, Cloud."
Cloud spent some time sitting with Marlene, half-watching the movie she had playing and tensing every time she started her hoarse coughing. She finally managed to doze off toward the end of the movie. Cloud left it playing so that the sudden silence wouldn't wake her up, and walked softly out of the room and into the bar.
Marlene woke up about the time that Denzel came home from school. When Cloud went to check on her, he saw Denzel sitting on the couch, Marlene's legs stretched across his lap. He was waving a hand and telling her a story about something that had happened in school that day. While Denzel was talking, he reached over to turn the cloth on Marlene's forehead over to the cooler side.
Cloud stepped quietly back out of the room, reassuring himself that Marlene had plenty of people looking after her and that she was going to be fine.
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Chapter Twenty-Five
Cloud had his sword out in an instant, and Tifa yanked Elia out of the booth and to the ground, covering her just as there was a sudden blinding flash and a deafening explosion of sound. Tifa clapped her hands to her ears, blinking rapidly but seeing nothing except white light. Stun grenade, her mind told her. It was non-lethal, just an explosion of light and noise, commonly used to disorient a potential target. Her ears were ringing. Her vision, at least, began to clear after several seconds and she started to see vague shapes through the whiteness. There was a figure that had to be Cloud, standing firmly at the front door, swords in his hands weaving through the air. Either he had recovered more quickly or he was fighting blind. Regardless, he had managed to keep the shadowy figures on the other side of the door out of the bar.
It was then that she noticed something hit the floor. She probably wouldn't have seen it except it landed right next to her. Something cylindrical…
Tifa grabbed the object off the floor. She threw it straight out the door, over the heads of the shadows who were now meeting the sharp end of Cloud's blades, and it exploded. She couldn't tell how large the blast radius was, but it couldn't have been too big because Seventh Heaven remained unharmed.
Adrenaline was surging through Tifa, clearing her mind and focusing her body's energy toward battle. A hot rock of fury had formed in her stomach--these people were obviously out to kill. They had sent a stun grenade in first--maybe to make it easier to kill them--but the explosive that she had thrown out the door was definitely not for stunning.
And her children were upstairs.
She clenched her fists and went after Cloud, who was moving out the front door. Her ears were still ringing, but sounds were starting to come back in garbled little spurts. Her vision was much clearer, and when she reached the door, she had a wide view of the street. A nondescript truck--military style, but without any military markings--was parked outside, and right beside it was a smoking crater where the explosive had gone off. It had just missed hitting the truck, but it had apparently not missed several people. She might have felt nauseated at the mess if she wasn't still focused on staying alive and keeping her family safe.
Memories were flashing rapidly through Tifa's mind as she saw Cloud fighting, memories of watching him fighting Sephiroth from inside Cid's airship, memories of herself fighting…so many battles…
The memories were a distraction she couldn't afford right then. She focused on what was in front of her and launched herself at the nearest man as he swung his gun toward her. She had him disarmed and unconscious in the time it took the few remaining people to notice that she had come out of the bar behind Cloud.
It didn't take long to realize that while these people obviously had some training, they weren't nearly as skilled as she and Cloud were. She felt like she had barely even stepped outside before she and Cloud were standing with a dozen or so fallen bodies around them, some dead, some unconscious.
Cloud whirled toward the house. "Tifa, we have to go now!"
Tifa nodded. It wasn't safe here.
They ran inside and Cloud hauled Elia, wide-eyed and trembling, to her feet. "We have to move," he told her. "Come on." They headed through the bar and into the house, quickly climbing the stairs. Tifa's heart leapt into her throat when she reached Marlene's room and saw that her bed was empty. She moved over to Denzel's room and discovered his bed was also vacant. She was about to panic, wondering if someone had slipped past them and taken the kids, and wondering why would they have done that, when Cloud said, "The passage." Still gripping Elia's arm, he moved toward his office. "The kids know if something dangerous is happening here, they're supposed to use the escape route and call for help."
The fist gripping Tifa's heart eased slightly. Denzel and Marlene had undoubtedly heard the stun grenade go off, could have looked out their windows to see what was happening outside, and could have used the trapdoor in Cloud's office to get out. The emergency phone that the kids took whenever they went out was kept in Cloud's office, so if they had been thinking about it, they would have taken it with them.
Cloud pulled his phone out and made a call. A moment later, he said, "Denzel? Are you all right?" A pause. "No, stay right there." Another pause as Cloud listened, and he said, "Good. We'll be right there." He shut his phone. "They're safe. They used the passage--we'll have to use it, too, unless we want to take a huge detour to get to them."
Tifa recalled that the passage out of the house came up in the alley behind the building next door. The alley was walled off from Seventh Heaven so that anyone trying to get to it would have to walk around the block to do so.
Elia still looked completely stunned and she was breathing hard as Cloud opened the trapdoor in his office, revealing the ladder that went down, past the second hidden door in the living room, and continued into a tunnel. Tifa went down first, followed by Elia, and Cloud came last, pulling the trapdoor shut behind himself and enclosing them in complete blackness. Fortunately, the tunnel at the bottom of the ladder wasn't very long, and it was easy to feel along it to get to the end.
Tifa spotted Denzel and Marlene as soon as she climbed out of the tunnel. They were huddled together in the shadows of the alley, shivering in their pajamas in the cold night air. Marlene was gripping Denzel's arm and they were both wide-eyed and pale.
Marlene released Denzel and flung herself on Tifa. "You're okay," she gasped.
Tifa squeezed her tightly. "I'm okay. Are you?" She tilted Marlene's face up, seeing the fear in her eyes, but also the determination.
Marlene nodded. "We heard an explosion and saw people outside, but we got the emergency phone and got out! Denzel was just about to call Yuffie." Both children were looking at Elia with expressions of confusion.
Cloud squeezed Denzel's shoulder. "You both did great."
Despite Denzel's worried, pinched face, his eyes lit up and he nodded at Cloud.
Cloud turned to Elia. "Did they do anything to you? Implant something in you while they had you?"
"I-I-" Elia took a deep breath. "They ran blood tests on me a couple of times. They knocked me out to run some other test…they were trying to do an amniocentesis on me and I was fighting them, so they put me under…I don't know what else they might have done while I was out…"
"They're either really good at tracking or they put something in you to track you," Cloud said. "Either way, we're going to have to move." He looked at Tifa. "I'll call Reeve and have him get an airship ready. If we can get Elia into the air, it will probably be the safest place for her."
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"What in the name of Leviathan is going on?" Yuffie demanded when they reached the WRO airship base. "I've got reports coming in about an explosion outside Seventh Heaven, and then Reeve calls to say to get down here and to watch out for you guys and...hey!" She planted her hands on her hips and looked at Elia. "You're Dorne's granddaughter, aren't you? We met last year--what are you doing here?"
"Yuffie, let's just get on the airship? It's ready, right?" Cloud asked.
Yuffie nodded. "This way. We're using Reeve's personal airship."
Reeve was waiting just inside the small airship, and he looked at them with concern. He frowned a bit when he saw Elia, but then his eyes went to Cloud and Tifa. "Care to explain what's going on?"
"You're sure your pilot is trustworthy?" Cloud asked.
"Yes," Reeve said.
"Let's get in the air and then we'll talk."
Yuffie led the kids over to a narrow seat on the airship and sat them down, swiftly grabbing several blankets out of a cabinet and wrapping them around both shivering children. As the airship lifted off, Tifa finally let herself breathe. She stood with Cloud, her arm pressed against his--he was just as tense as she was. But they were alive, and they were all safe.
Yuffie bounced back over and looked at them expectantly. "So? What is going on?"
"She can explain it," Cloud said, nodding at Elia.
For the second time that night, Tifa listened to Elia explain from the beginning everything that had been going on. Reeve listened in complete silence; Yuffie listened with numerous gasps, exclamations, and a curse that made her clap her hand to her mouth and glance back at Denzel and Marlene to see if they had heard her, but they were out of earshot and talking quietly to each other. It was also Yuffie who interrupted Elia's story to ask, "Wait a sec. Where's your baby's dad in all of this?"
Tifa had wondered the same thing, but there hadn't been a good time to ask back at Seventh Heaven.
Elia looked down and shook her head. "He died…just before I found out I was pregnant with this baby." Her voice broke. "A truck crashed into his car…it was a rainy day and…" She took a deep breath. "So I moved back to Mideel to be near Granddad."
Yuffie squeezed her shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Elia nodded. There was a moment of silence as she composed herself, and then she continued with her story. When she was finished, Cloud and Tifa told them briefly how they had been attacked at Seventh Heaven.
"Possible implanted tracking device, hm?" Reeve looked at Elia. "I think I may have a scanner on board. Had I not left Cait Sith at the WRO headquarters--but no matter. We'll--"
"If you don't have something on board, Vincent's got a bunch of equipment stashed at his place in Kalm. We should go there anyway; we're gonna have to round up some trustworthy people if we're gonna check out these coordinates," Yuffie said. "And we are gonna check them out," she told Reeve.
"Of course." Reeve nodded.
"Commissioner Tuesti," Elia spoke up again, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. "Is there anyway you can find out about my grandfather? I know he's--I just...need to know if he's safe."
"Ms. Garrens." Tifa knew instantly from Reeve's grave tone and the expression in his eyes that he had something unpleasant to say.
Elia realized it, too; she froze and stared at Reeve.
"Just after Cloud contacted me, I received a phone call from your grandfather's research facility in Mideel. I'm very sorry to tell you that your grandfather is dead."
Elia's breath caught in her throat. "W-what? H-how?"
"He was shot. I was told it looked like a suicide, but under the circumstances--" He stopped talking as Elia doubled over, bracing her hands on her knees, sucking in sharp, uneven breaths. Tifa quickly caught her around the waist, and Elia sank into her and suddenly started sobbing, gut-wrenching cries that tore out of her throat. Tifa dropped to the ground with her, holding onto her and looking helplessly at Cloud. While she might have felt ambiguous about Professor Dorne, she felt nothing but sympathy for this woman who had been caught up in his inadvertent mess. She was as much of a victim of her grandfather's experiments as everyone who had been injured or killed in the school's attack. However unintentional the damage had been, it had still happened.
Tifa understood why Dorne had kept his silence, understood that he had been trying to protect his granddaughter, but now he was dead and he couldn't even answer for any of what he had done. In a perfect world, he would have been alive to at least see his granddaughter and he would have taken responsibility for his actions, however well-intentioned they might have been. Then again, in a perfect world none of this would have happened in the first place. This was life, and it wasn't always neat and orderly and fair. It was quite often dirty and messy and it had many injustices. It was left to them to right what wrongs they could, but Tifa knew very well that not everything turned out the way people wanted it to.
"It's…my…fault…" Elia managed to choke out around her weeping. "They probably killed him. They probably killed him when I escaped…trying to cover their tracks…if I had stayed there…if I hadn't left the boat…"
"Then you would have wound up an experiment. You and your baby," Tifa whispered to her. And according to what Elia had already said, Dorne's usefulness had already been about over for the coalition. They must have decided they could do without him now. Her mind was racing ahead…they had to find these people that were being experimented on before they all ended up dead.
As she continued to hold onto Elia, Tifa's gaze moved to Denzel and Marlene. The kids still didn't know exactly what was going on, only that some people were after this woman who had come to Cloud and Tifa for help. And Tifa still had no idea which of the missing people had died. What if it was Izzi? What if it wasn't? No matter what, someone's loved ones would have to face a loss and part of her was terrified it would be Denzel who would be faced with another loss.
"We have to find that boat before this coalition decides to move their base. If they abandon the boat, we'll have to start from scratch," Reeve was saying quietly to Cloud and Yuffie; Tifa could just hear him over Elia's crying. "And I want to know who in the WRO might be party to this. Until we know, I'm only going to call the people I trust absolutely."
"Reeve, these coordinates are over past Wutai," Yuffie said. "I bet if I call Red and Barret and Cid they can meet us--"
"What about the kids?" Tifa asked. Elia's crying was subsiding, and at Tifa's words, she took a last, gulping breath, her eyes darting guiltily over to Denzel and Marlene.
"Shera," Yuffie said immediately. "I'm sure she'll watch them. I'll see if we can get everyone to meet up in Rocket Town. Cloud, you call Cid and Shera and I'll call Barret and Red."
"In the meantime, Ms. Garrens, I realize this is a very difficult time for you, but I do need to see if I have a scanner on board. We need to find out if you have a tracer on you." Reeve crouched down in front of Elia and offered his hand.
Elia stared at Reeve with red, watery eyes, and then slowly grasped his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. Reeve led her through a door, into a different part of the ship. Cloud and Yuffie were both on the phone, and Tifa finally had a moment to go over to Denzel and Marlene. They made room so she could sit down between them.
"You two have been fantastic. Are you okay?" she asked them softly, wrapping an arm around each of them.
"Yes, but what's happening?" Denzel asked. "Who were those people who attacked the bar? Who is Elia? Where are we going?"
Tifa's fingers tightened around his arm. She considered carefully for a minute, and then said slowly, "Elia brought us information that might help us find the people who went missing."
Denzel's head whipped up and he stared at her with wide eyes. "You mean you're going to look for Izzi and everyone else?"
"We're hoping we might be able to find them." Tifa hesitated. She didn't want to break his heart anymore, but she knew that if they did find the abductees and if Izzi was indeed dead… "But…one of them died."
Denzel looked as if she had punched him in the gut, and she winced. "We don't know who," she said. "I won't tell you not to worry, Denzel, but don't give up yet."
Denzel closed his eyes for a long moment and then nodded once. Tifa knew it wasn't going to be that easy; fear and despair could be difficult to fight off, but she also knew that she couldn't have lied to him.
"Tifa?" Marlene asked quietly. "Why was Elia crying?"
"She just found out her grandfather died," Tifa replied softly.
Cloud hung up his phone and came over to them. He crouched and looked between Denzel and Marlene. "Are you okay?" His eyes went to Tifa's at the end of this question, and she knew he was asking her, too.
Denzel's hands clenched into fists and he looked at Cloud. "You're going to get them?"
Tifa and Cloud exchanged glances. She wasn't even sure if Denzel meant the missing people or those who had taken them, but in either case, the answer was the same. "We're going to do everything we possibly can," Cloud said.
Denzel nodded again and leaned back against Tifa.
"Will we be able to go home again?" Marlene asked.
"When this is over and we're sure it's safe," Cloud said. "Right now, you and Denzel are going to stay with Shera for a little while so Tifa and I can sort things out. Okay?"
Tifa reached for Cloud's hand and squeezed it, silently telling him that she was doing fine. She had been through worse--she even had the memories to back that up now. Overall, getting into a fight in her own home and being forced to flee in the middle of the night was definitely not the worst that could have happened.
Yuffie snapped her phone shut. "Barret and Red are heading for Cid's. After we nab Vincent, we'll go to Rocket Town and grab everyone, and then go in search of this boat. And oooh, when I get my hands on these people, they'll meet the sharp end of my shuriken."
"You have lots of sharp ends on your shuriken," Marlene said.
Yuffie nodded in satisfaction. "Exactly."