"No wonder I couldn't reach her," Aerith murmurs.
Lucrecia's cave used to be awash with Jenova's touch—the spindly roots of darkness were thick and deeply buried. The Lifestream is still regenerating its strength, damaged as it was, almost as if the area has become deadened like scar tissue. Aerith feels no sensation from it. No heartbeats of animals, or vibrancy of flora, or fortitude of stone. Such absence is repulsive to her, and it takes all of her willpower to follow Cloud as he approaches.
Cloud leaves Fenrir when the terrain demands it of him and continues on foot, his thoughts racing faster the closer he gets to his destination.
She isn't dead. She isn't dead. She isn't dead.
She's just…lost.
Right?
Vincent was careful to specify that he didn't know. Cloud holds this knowledge close to him, though the assurance it offers is minimal, and prays that Tifa is reachable. This is different from Lucrecia, Vincent had said, but he failed to articulate the specifics of how. Just that he could sense it, as if something clued him in.
Cloud needs to see for himself.
He heaves and slides and stumbles over the unforgiving nature obscuring the cave until it looms up ahead. Thunderheads are roiling in the sky, near to spilling their rain and lightning. He allows the blackness of the tunnel to swallow him, his jogging footfalls echoing heavily in the tight space as they beat to the drum of his heart. Every second feels like an eternity. Cloud rounds the bend and stumbles to a halt, throwing out his palm to catch himself against the coarse stone when he instantly feels unsteady, as if the ground has rippled under his boots. A curse tears around his throat, all breath and gravel.
Tifa stands before Lucrecia, her hand outstretched; a jagged pillar of iridescent crystal rises up around her, its sharply tapered point lost among the stalactites.
Cloud forces his feet to move until he can see her face.
She looks…peaceful. Her expression is arranged into the blankness of sleep and her posture is relaxed. Her skin is littered with abrasions and cuts, and she is paler than he remembers; he spots the blood covering her shoulder and exhales a harsh breath. Contrasting her pallor, the curtain of her hair is a shock of darkness down her back and her lips are still an inviting pink.
Cloud remembers how those satin lips felt against his, so long ago. Back when they were different people—back when they had fewer scars.
Fucking Shiva.
Seeing her here, right in front of him but a universe away, he knows with finality how wrong he's been. Tifa was so much stronger than he ever was. Strong enough to lay down her own peace of mind, and the relationships that she treasured so immensely, for the fate of the world. Strong enough to go against the grain at the very heart of herself and commit an act that would permanently stain her with anguish. Strong enough to doom herself to a life of self-loathing and grief.
Tifa Lockhart used to be so vibrant, hopeful, cheerful. By comparison, Cloud Strife is so deeply damaged. If only he had listened to Aerith and done what she asked—he could have saved Tifa from destroying herself.
It shouldn't have been her.
It should have been me.
He wants to see her eyes. He needs to look into them and see the warmth of a welcoming hearth, not two crimson discs of blood.
Please.
Cloud isn't sure what possesses him—there isn't even any thought behind the action. But his glove is falling gently to the ground and his bare palm lifts—
Aerith's eyes widen in alarm. The crystal is poisoned by Jenova, warped by insatiable hunger—
She flings out a hand.
A sudden draft billows directly into him, pushing him back a step. The floral scent sailing upon it erases Cloud's surprise before he can fully register the shock of such unnatural wind in a place like this.
He nearly thinks that he can hear her voice.
"Not yet."
The crystal imprisoning Tifa and Lucrecia glows dimly from within—a soft, fuzzy gold that is gone as quickly as it appears.
The effort of exorcising the Jenova cells within Lucrecia exhausts Aerith, as there is no strength for her to draw upon here, distant from the Planet's blood as she is, but it's worth it. With one last lingering look between Cloud and Tifa, she smiles and leaves.
A second, gentler gust flutters from behind him. It's the permission he needs.
He finally raises his hand to press against the several inches of crystal that separate him from Tifa. The translucent rock pulses with warmth and coolness, as if following the easy rhythm of inhaling sunlight and exhaling frost. Cloud allows his own uneven breathing to fall in sync with the sensation and closes his eyes.
I'm sorry I'm late.
He doesn't know how this happened to her. He finds that at the moment, he doesn't care to know. He simply continues to tell himself that she isn't dead—despite the lack of air in there, despite the amount of time that has passed, despite the macabre cast of ruby and white that screams of a stationary heart, he continues to tell himself that she's just lost. Because if she's simply lost, then he can find her.
And then, he suddenly realizes how tired he is. It's been over a day since he last slept and he has been anxiously hyperactive, whether that meant pestering Cid's crew about their speed and course on the flight over here or pushing Fenrir to the limit or forcing his body to climb and hike and run. Why his fatigue is asserting itself and demanding prominence, now, of all times, baffles him. But with shock and uncertainty still keeping logic and the sting of his grief at bay, Cloud just feels emotionally spent. He has no desire to leave, even though his bed roll is stashed away in Fenrir's storage compartment. Perhaps he'll just rest his eyes for a moment, and then he'll find a way to get Tifa out.
With a long, heavy exhale, he settles onto the ground and leans back against the dichotomous rock as it continues to govern his breathing. It isn't long after his head tips back that Cloud falls asleep.
Tifa is cleaning a glass.
Thankfully, it's the last one left over from the lunch rush. As soon as it's dry, she'll put it away and head back to the kitchen to start preparing dinner for her friends. It's been much too long since all of them got together and celebrated life, so Tifa called them all up a few days ago and insisted upon having everyone over. The bar will remain closed to the public for the remainder of the evening and Cloud should be back soon, having cut his day short to help her prepare. He'll walk through the door any minute now and grab her gently, one hand on her waist and the other spearing into her hair, and he'll tilt her head back and kiss her softly, sweetly—the best way Tifa thinks she's ever been greeted. Then he'll sit at the bar for a short while and drink the glass of water she'll place in front of him as he tells her about the interesting people and places he saw on his travels today. Maybe, if she's feeling particularly affectionate and he's looking especially rugged, Tifa will make her way to his side of the bar and kiss him until the breath leaves his lungs and the only thoughts left in his mind center around her and him and wandering hands and falling clothes—
No, wait. That's not right.
Tifa blinks down at the glass with a pensive frown as the motions of her hands slow.
Cloud isn't going to come in and kiss her because…
Oh!
Now she remembers.
Her hands resume their quick pace as Tifa smiles and shakes her head at her own forgetfulness. Cloud called earlier to say that an emergent delivery had popped up, and would it be okay if he were a bit late? Tifa told him it was fine, that she'll enlist the kids to help her get things ready. Speaking of which, those two should be home from school any second now. They'll bound through the front door and talk excitedly over each other as they recount the events of their day. Marlene will show her the endearingly awkward picture she drew in art class and Denzel will boast about his prowess on the track circuit. Tifa will laugh and praise them and send them upstairs to drop off their backpacks. Then they'll scamper back down and join her in the kitchen where they'll make messes and steal bites of food behind her back and—
Tifa blinks and surveys the faces of her loved ones as they laugh and converse merrily.
Marlene is sitting upon Barret's knee, telling him about the spelling bee that she won while his expression beams in pride. Seated at the table with them are Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge, who take turns throwing back shots and snatching up slices of Tifa's homemade pizza. Reeve and Vincent are stationed in the corner, where it is no less quiet but a bit less rowdy, and their discussion is hushed. Cid's arm is draped around Shera's shoulder, his fingertips absently grazing her distended belly—she's due in only a month, Tifa recalls happily—as he talks animatedly with Nanaki.
On the other side of the room, Yuffie shows off her latest materia acquisitions to a captive audience. Aerith looks politely interested, though Tifa can tell she doesn't really care all that much, but Zack's eyes are shining with awe at the rare powers in Yuffie's collection. On his other side sits Denzel, equally starstruck—those are two peas in a pod, Denzel and Zack. Aerith looks away to scan the room and meets Tifa's eyes with a cheery smile as she sips a fruity cocktail.
Tifa sets down the glass, which is now dry, and steps toward the partition in the bar top so that she can go rescue Aerith from Yuffie's exuberance. In fact, Tifa thinks to herself, Aerith can keep her company while she waits for—
Her hand alights on the worn wood.
She blinks.
Afternoon sunlight shafts through the windows at the front of the bar as the door closes behind the final customer from lunch. Tifa glances down at the dish rack. Thankfully, there's only one glass left—then she can retreat to the kitchen and begin making dinner for her friends.
Humming idly under her breath, Tifa picks up the glass and starts to clean.
Cloud opens his eyes to a quiet night in Edge.
He's not terribly familiar with this part of the city, but he knows that it's a bit far from his apartment. The building in front of him is a patchwork of repurposed wood and metal, like most of the structures in Edge, but there's something homey and inviting about its imperfections. Soft lights illuminate a sign above the door and Cloud's eyes trace over the curling script.
Seventh Heaven.
What the hell?
His brow creases in confusion. This is not the Seventh Heaven he recalls—this is not Tifa's bar in the slums of Sector 7.
Without any thought other than solving this little mystery, Cloud opens the door and steps inside.
Tifa glances up sharply when the door opens. The disengagement of the latch, the cry of the stiff hinges, the subtle hiss of displaced air—such inconsequential sounds amplify and reverberate, covering up the chatter as it dies away.
The motion halts just before the point at which the opening would begin to reveal the newcomer. The world stills for three heartbeats.
Without ceremony, the door falls shut. Tifa blinks.
It's nice the get some sunlight in Edge; the overcast has been perpetual these past few weeks, it seems. Her mood bolstered by the pleasant change in weather and excitement at her friends' impending visit, Tifa hums as she cleans the glass in her hand.
Cloud's boot alights upon the familiar squeaky board just beyond the threshold of the church in Sector 5. His eyes jerk down in crisp shock before darting around the cavernous sanctuary in confusion. Wasn't he just standing outside a bar?
A peek over his shoulder confirms that he is, in fact, now in the heart of the Sector 5 slums, not downtown Edge. There is no sign of Meteorfall. The artificial, unsaturated sunlight of Midgar's heat lamps simultaneously illuminates and bleaches the color from the heaps of scrap and trash scattered about. Shinra HQ looms at the center of the spanning disk overhead, cloudy for the smog in the air, piercing under-city and topside, alike. But there is no life in this Midgar—no slum dwellers loitering about the winding pathways, no military helicopters flitting about. No distant sound of vehicle traffic, no childish peals of laughter.
It's unsettling. Cloud looks away and ventures further into the church.
There is no gaping hole in the floor to be filled with sparkling water. Aerith's flowerbed remains intact, and any evidence of Tifa's fight with the Remnant is gone.
Cloud stoops into a crouch next to the spread of yellow and white blossoms, reaching out a gloved hand to see if they're real, or if they're as hollow and plastic as everything else seems to be—
"Careful."
He stands and whirls, caught off guard not only by the suddenness of the voice but by its sound, its owner—
Himself.
Cloud Strife stands with his arms folded, expression closed, borrowed SOLDIER uniform looking just as it used to. The Buster Sword peeks out from behind his shoulder.
"You don't tend to do well with fragile things," he finishes.
Cloud—the real Cloud, he assures himself desperately—merely gapes.
"Not that I did, either," the doppelgänger concedes with an uncaring shrug. "Then again, I had a good excuse. What's yours?"
"What are—how—"
Cloud sees his younger self wave an impatient hand. "Not important. Answer the question."
"Is this Sephiroth's doing?" Cloud growls. "Jenova?"
"We both know you'd be able to tell if it was—quit trying to change the subject." An eye roll, a familiar shift of stance. Cloud sees all of the aloof arrogance that he only recognized in retrospect, when he wasn't this person anymore. "Unless, of course, you really just don't get it."
Cloud merely stares. He's right—there is no toxic imprint of Sephiroth or Jenova infiltrating his senses, only a disconcerting feeling of falseness. This is probably just a strange dream brought on by exhaustion; if that's the case, he can simply ignore whatever is going on, right?
"Wrong," the imposter answers.
Cloud folds his arms in a mirror of himself and speaks through clenched teeth, already tired of whatever this is.
"Then what the hell is this?"
"Do you ever wonder if life would have been easier if you had stayed—well, me?"
Cloud scowls, incredulous. "What?"
The double smirks at him and shrugs. "I mean, think about it. Sure, your memories would have stayed incorrect—but is it really better to know the truth? What if you had never figured it out? You wouldn't have had to remember the shit storm of horrors that happened to us. You could have carried on thinking that you had become what you wanted to be, done what you set out to do: Cloud Strife, First Class SOLDIER.
"You wouldn't have had to remember Zack's death. And we still would have beaten Sephiroth—I didn't have to become you for that to happen. And I wouldn't have let Aerith die. I would have found another way to break through Meteor's defenses. In fact, who's to say that loading up the Highwind with huge materia and sending it into Meteor with a strong dose of de-spell casting wouldn't have done the trick?"
Cloud's eyes widen. His arms fall from the guarded position to dangle uselessly at his sides, finger lax. The doppelgänger takes a step forward, the taunting smirk melting into clinical accusation.
"And with me being me and her being alive, well…" Cloud watches, numb, as his younger self throws a pointed glance at the flowerbed. "Imagine it. Settling down into a nice, quiet life in a quaint village somewhere. Tons of nature, none of the industry or fighting or corruption caused by Shinra. She would have made it easy—she was made for the kind of life, unlike anyone else we've ever known."
The implication of that last statement is obvious, and the double sees the understanding on Cloud's face.
"Yeah. There was always a choice to be made, I'll admit." He shrugs. "But again—with me being me and her being alive, you know which way it would have gone. Tifa was too much of the past and not enough of the future. After all, isn't it her fault that I became you?"
Cloud shakes his head, but there is little conviction in the motion. "You aren't me—not the real me. I'd rather remember and be myself than be you."
The imposter chuckles. "Keep telling yourself that. I guess that's the one thing we have in common—we're good at lying to ourselves."
"Shut up!" Cloud roars hoarsely. His hand flashes back and then his sword is arcing downward toward the double's clavicle. It slices through cleanly—too cleanly to have hit anything but air—and buries itself in the dilapidated floorboards.
Tifa lifts the bar divider, intent on catching up with Aerith about the quaint flower shop she's opened up beneath the apartment she shares with Zack—
One glass to go, Tifa tells herself as she surveys the empty tables with their thoroughly cleaned surfaces shining beneath the afternoon sun rays.
"It should have been me," the false SOLDIER claims from his new place behind Cloud. "I would have gotten the job done. I would have saved her."
And beneath the rage, Cloud's racing mind can't help but wonder.
The rocket that Palmer so recklessly launched at Meteor did damage it significantly. What if another vehicle, especially one loaded up with the most powerful material on the Planet, was subsequently sent careening into the wounded calamity? And perhaps the double is right—maybe all it would have taken was a powerful de-barrier spell to prevent Meteor from reforming…
If only he had more time to come up with a plan that would have worked.
If only he hadn't given Sephiroth the Black Materia.
If only he had truly killed Sephiroth the first time.
If only he had been stronger.
If only he had been more stable.
If only he wasn't always too late.
If only he had made SOLDIER.
If only he had saved Zack—Aerith—Tifa.
As if to counterstrike the poisonous doubt attempting to resurrect his guilt, Cloud hears the echo of Zack's voice in the pounding of his heart—
"You'll be my living legacy."
And Aerith's—
"Only one person is responsible for my death."
And Tifa's—
"There was no other way."
And that's what it comes down to, isn't it? What he's been simultaneously chasing and running from? Trust and forgiveness. Trusting the choices, convictions, strengths and weaknesses of those around him. Trusting himself. Forgiving himself for his shortcomings, mistakes, and simply not being able to shoulder the weight of the world. Forgiving himself and everyone else for their sacrifices.
Cloud replaces his sword in its sheath. His thoughts still, his heart rate calms, his breathing evens out.
As he turns and exits the church, his younger self continues to volley questions like darts—arrows—bullets.
"How can you live with yourself? Don't you wish you had never left Nibelheim? Don't you think life would have been easier for everyone if you'd let Geostigma kill you off? Wouldn't you be better off leaving Tifa to rot in that cave? Some living legacy you turned out to be."
But the clarity of the snarling muddles and quiets, then distorts as if underwater, then dies away altogether with the definitive pound of the door shutting.
Cloud halts before the specter of Midgar's past and looks out at the city, not really seeing anything. He feels drained, but centered. He's done allowing could-have-been thoughts rule his life. There would be no greater insult to Zack and Aerith's memories than to reduce himself to dwelling on the past—not when they fought so hard to give him a future. He owes it to them to make the best of their gift, to heal and get better, to live for the both of them in the way they always deserved. That shade of himself will always reside in the darkest corner of his soul, but he doesn't have to lock himself away with it. He won't.
The greyscale of Midgar bleeds into an indigo nightfall over Edge. Muffled conversation bursts into life behind him, and Cloud spins around to find the church replaced with the bar he saw before. Somehow, he knows that there is someone in there waiting for him; someone who is lost, someone who he now has the fortitude to find. He needs to bring her back.
Cloud reaches out a steady hand and opens the door.
A/N: Huge thank you to verdance for your amazing support; your reviews make my day! Thank you to everyone else who has dropped a note, as well—check your inboxes for grateful replies :)
Oh, Cloud. You poor, messed up man. It takes a heavy dose of catharsis and self-discovery to even make a dent in such deeply rooted trauma, huh?