"Just a few minutes, okay guys? We don't want to keep Yuffie waiting."
Marlene skips toward the wonderful sprawl of flowers, tossing an unintelligible assent over her shoulder as she clumsily tugs Denzel along while he slips off his jacket in the muggy air of the church. He told her that he's been here before, with Cloud, but that doesn't stop Marlene from gushing about the beautiful flower girl who once frequented this church. She recalls the quiet look of melancholy that would overtake Daddy's expression whenever she brought up Aerith, and she's excited to finally be able to talk about her guardian angel with someone who won't grow sad about the subject. Memories flutter out of her like butterflies catching the wind.
"And she always wore a pink ribbon in her hair, so I do, too!"
"That's nice," Denzel says as they kneel before the flowers. Tifa's slow footsteps approach from behind them.
Marlene turns to look at her—she has never mentioned Aerith around Tifa, and she doesn't want to make Tifa sad like Daddy. But before her gaze can rove all the way around, it snags on a small pile of items off to the side. Marlene frowns—those weren't here the last time she and Daddy visited.
Apparently, Denzel notices, as well. "Hey—that's Cloud's stuff!"
"Huh?"
Denzel scrambles to his feet and hurries over to the modest crate, flipping the latch and lifting the lid to reveal a stack of supplies and tools.
"Cloud uses these to clean his swords," Denzel explains. He shuffles over to an adjacent, bigger box and opens the lid. Colorful orbs lay nestled within, shimmering in the hazy light of the church. Marlene gasps and scampers to Denzel's side with Tifa on her heels. She glances down at the materia collection before looking at the other belongings: a bedroll, lantern, duffle bag, and some discarded bandages tinged with black.
"He keeps his materia here so that robbers in Edge won't take them," Denzel continues. "But he usually hides it, and he usually doesn't have this other stuff here…"
"Does Cloud live here?" Marlene asks incredulously.
Tifa's reply is strangely distant. "I guess he does."
Denzel bends down and picks up the long strip of bandage. "Is he...sick? Like me?"
Marlene doesn't like the tilt of Tifa's brows as she reaches down to gingerly take the cloth from Denzel's proffered hand.
"Oh, Cloud…"
Suddenly, Marlene wishes that she never asked to come here. Tifa had originally said no, that they were due to meet Yuffie in Edge so that she could show them the accommodations that the WRO had arranged for them, but Marlene begged. It wasn't long before Tifa caved with a begrudged smile and asked Cid to drop them off on the outskirts of Midgar.
Now, Tifa and Denzel are sad. Just like Daddy.
Marlene wraps her fingers around Tifa's free hand. "Maybe we could…wait for Cloud to come back?"
Tifa's eyes widen, and Marlene wonders why she suddenly looks so panicked. "I don't think—"
"Could we?" Denzel asks with a desperately earnest expression. He looks so much more vibrant than Marlene has ever seen him—she knows that he misses Cloud, like she does.
Tifa is silent for a few long moments. Marlene watches, unable to explain the pure anxiety on Tifa's face melt as she reins it in and frowns down at the bandage in uneasy thought.
"We can wait for a few minutes," she eventually concedes with reluctance. Over Denzel's small cheer, she adds, "We still have to meet Yuffie soon, so we can't stay for too long."
Marlene presses herself against Tifa's hip in a quick hug. "Thank you, Ti—"
The church door swings open and slams against the wall with a resounding bang that reverberates around the vast space.
"Cloud!" Denzel lunges forward a few steps before freezing. Marlene peeks around Tifa with a growing grin that quickly flickers and dies.
That man is not Cloud.
.O.O.O.O.O.
Cloud takes slow, heavy steps across the floor of the church, exhaustion weighing his feet and eyelids. The bouts of fatigue have been increasing in frequency for the past week and the long drive to Healen Lodge merely served to exacerbate his tiredness. Perhaps that's why he feels nothing but detached curiosity as he frowns at the wreckage strewn about the sanctuary—smashed pews, scuffed floorboards, pillars with chunks of concrete caved in and broken off. None of the damage looks purposeful, like vandalism. No, he concludes, there was a fight here.
His steps hasten a touch as he peers towards where his meager belongings should be. But before he can direct his gaze, something catches his attention.
A dark, slender, familiar figure is lying in Aerith's flower bed.
Everything about Cloud freezes. His footsteps, his breath, his thoughts, his blood.
He doesn't realize that he's started moving again until he is standing right over her, peering down with wide eyes. His jaw clenches and the rigidity spreads, tightening tendons and curling his hands into fists. Flowers crumple and tear under the careless soles of his boots as he takes stock of the sight before him and wonders if it's a dream.
Tifa is lying on her side. She is a gradient of shadowy clothes, blossoming bruises, and too-pale skin. Her hair is splayed out behind her, shorter than he's seen it since their youth, dripping off of petals and grass blades like trickles of ink. The outfit she wears is also new to him, though it resembles the style that she has always favored for its mobility and comfort. A deeply purple bruise is spreading across the sliver of midriff exposed by her top—internal bleeding. The injury is serious. There is a pink ribbon tied around one of her biceps; her lips should be that color, Cloud thinks to himself, but they are pallid like the rest of her.
For only a second, he wonders what happened, how she—Tifa Lockhart, master martial artist—ended up like this.
But his thoughts quickly divert to a sudden realization.
He doesn't want to wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze.
In fact, there is still an instinct singing through his bones and muscles, twirling through his veins along with currents of mako—the urge to stand at her defense and slaughter whoever hurt her. It feels archaic, deep within him, as if wound into his very DNA. He chooses to ignore it, to write it off as a product of surprise.
That day, two years ago, he had nearly vowed to kill her if he came across her. The resolve behind that unfinished promise has cracked and decayed in the time that has passed, all of its potency having rotted away. He thinks that he's known that for a while, known that he quickly lost the desire to erase her. But the wound within him—the wound that she opened—still pulses blood with consistent agony, every second of every day, and the jagged edges of the gash have drawn him to her for some sort of catharsis, either by the cautery of violence or the stitching of yelling or the fabled magic of something he can't quite imagine. Cloud has never allowed himself to envision how events would play out when he inevitably found her. The choking swell of conflicting emotions that currently clogs his throat has never let him.
All he knows is that he doesn't want to kill her.
Even so, that doesn't erase the betrayal. Broken trust. Total disregard for a line that was clear. No hesitance to leap over the solid boundary between right and wrong.
Cloud wonders if he should leave. Maybe, if he ends up confronting her, he'll come out the other side feeling even worse than he already does. There doesn't seem to be any plausible way to achieve the relief that he so desperately craves, not when hate—is that what it is? he wonders, and the ambiguous answer is written in Aerith's blood and Tifa's tears—sizzles within him. Besides, he'll be dead soon, anyways. It is that resolving thought that chases away the warring impulses within him.
His eyes manage to rip themselves away from Tifa and to the side. Unsurprisingly, the box containing his materia stash is gone, and the rest of his belongings are scattered about from a recent ransacking.
All he can feel about that is a mild annoyance.
The healing materia slides eagerly out of its slot in his armlet and plops dully into the soil next to Tifa's arm when he drops it. He probably won't be needing it, anyways.
With that, he turns to go. His shoulders slump with the weight of the world.
.O.O.O.O.O.
"I'm going to kill him," Aerith seethes through clenched teeth from Zack's side, her burning green eyes glaring daggers into Cloud.
Zack merely shakes his head in disappointed agreement as he watches Cloud turn away from Tifa's crumpled form.
.O.O.O.O.O.
Cloud makes it two steps before he spots Denzel's jacket on the floor. He stoops to pick it up and frowns down at the soft navy cloth before glancing back at Tifa, growing concern fluttering uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. Facts tick off as he connects the dots laid out around him.
The kids were here with Tifa.
Tifa is injured and unconscious, clearly fresh from an altercation with an opponent powerful enough to render her such.
The church is wrecked.
The kids are missing.
Denzel's jacket drops back to the dusty ground and Cloud whirls around and snatches up the healing materia. He kneels before Tifa and takes a deep breath, channeling a deep pull from the mysterious well of energy within him. Powerful curative magic wraps around her, casting a pale green glow over her features as it washes away the discolorations marring her skin. Once the spell fades, Cloud replaces the materia into his armlet and reaches out, hesitating for only a moment, before rocking Tifa's shoulder with his gloved hand.
"Tifa."
Her name feels misplaced as it stumbles past his lips. He ignores the faint stir of nostalgia it evokes.
She doesn't move, so he repeats the motion. He doesn't say her name again.
A small furrow nestles into her brow as she audibly inhales. Her fingers twitch against the flora as her expression breaks open further into a wince.
All of his reservations well up once more in a towering wave, as if her movements have somehow turned her from illusion to real. Cloud retracts his hand as if singed and feels the sudden, overwhelming urge to run before she sees him, but it's too late.
Her head shifts and ruby eyes open—close—open. Then they focus squarely on him, pinning him down with a barrage of torrential emotions. Disbelief. Astonishment. Sorrow. Weariness.
"Cloud?" she whispers, so nonexistent that he wonders if he imagined the sound against the motion of her lips.
He doesn't know what to say, or if he even wants to say anything, so he says nothing.
Tifa's eyes remain steadfastly on him even as she works to push herself into a sitting position. Her arms tremble beneath her weight and Cloud can see the fatigued tenderness that she is careful not to exacerbate. It takes a moment, and then she is staring at him with her legs folded to her side, her arms gingerly wrapped around her torso. One of her hands flutters involuntarily and intermittently against her bicep—a sign of lingering damage inflicted by lightning magic. There are questions written all over her face, held back from her lips by the steel bands of caution.
He has been waiting for this encounter—scouring the world for it—and now that he is in it, he wants to flee.
"Where are the kids?" he manages to ask roughly, coldly, like jagged ice.
Tifa gasps, her eyes finally breaking away from him to dart around the room as if suddenly remembering where they are.
"Oh, Shiva…" The words are wispy in tone but sharp in panic.
"Tifa."
She looks back at him, then away again. "There was man, he—" She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. "I-I think he said something about—his mother?"
Cloud swears viciously under his breath, startling Tifa into flinching. The motion stands out to Cloud in a decidedly unpleasant way but he forces his attention back to what matters.
"Do you—do you know that man?" Tifa asks in a small voice.
Cloud merely stands and turns away, pulling out his PHS and dialing a number he hoped that he would never have to use. Over the rustling of Tifa struggling to her feet behind him, he hears the distant trill of a ringtone from outside the church.
"Yo!" comes Reno's obnoxious salutation as he and Rude saunter through the doorway. "Nice timing, man. We were just lookin' for you." His light eyes widen as he surveys the room and gives Tifa's disheveled state a onceover—something odd flickers within the observant glance that deepens Cloud's scowl. "So, were you guys having a fight or just getting really frisky?"
Rude coughs uncomfortably. Tifa emits a strangled sound of indignation.
"Kadaj was here," Cloud growls curtly. "He took Denzel and Marlene."
"The orphan you picked up and Wallace's daughter?" Rude clarifies.
"Yeah."
The Turks exchange glances. Rude is as unreadable as ever. Reno, on the other hand, looks contemplative, though it's merely a show. Cloud knows what he's going to say before the words leave his smirking mouth.
"You know, maybe we can help each other."