Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy VII, or Vincent, or Tifa. Just inserting them into the machine of my imagination and watching what pops out.

One Week Later

by: thelittletree

(In my fic 'Destination' - screwed up some parts of it, but, oh well, in the past - I had Tifa telling Yuffie about a time when she and V had broken up because she wanted a baby and he definitely did not. I wasn't planning on writing this scene. Nope. Never. But then a reviewer named MontJed thought it would be cool if I wrote about the time Tifa asked Vincent and he said no, and then all of the stuff that happened afterward. And the idea rattled around for awhile until it was spilling out into an empty Microsoft Works word processor. Funny how these things work. This isn't the first argument, but it's the journey towards resolution. Yup. Hope it stands up to imagination.)

He'd been gone almost five days.

Four days, fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes. Not that she was keeping track.

She'd spent the four nights since he'd left huddled under a spare blanket on the couch because his scent, cold and faint, but undeniably present, was still in the bed sheets. Something beneath her anger was keeping her from washing them, even though she made other excuses for leaving them there: she didn't feel like it; she didn't have time; she didn't really need to do a wash yet, and she wasn't going to make this a priority like she was desperate to get rid every last trace of him. Because she wasn't desperate. It had been a mutual break-up. When they'd discovered that they had different goals it had made sense to end the relationship. This wasn't like it had been with Cloud; she wasn't going to live in the past.

And she wasn't going to crawl onto his side of the bed and curl up in the memories that were anything but cold and faint, no matter how many times a day she was tempted to.

There had been five occasions so far where she'd walked through the door, knowing even as she turned the key in the lock that he wasn't standing at the counter with a mug of tea at his elbow, with his sleeves rolled up and his hair ineffectively cupped into submission behind his ears; with a smile in his eyes, twitching the corners of his mouth, as he glanced up from making supper and managed to look both unaffected and like he'd been waiting all day for a good hug.

She missed him, she could admit. She missed the way he looked, the way he talked to her, the way he moved and walked and held her and made her feel better just by reading the bad day in her eyes and asking her to taste something he was stirring on the stove. She missed him; but she wasn't going to fall apart like she had without Cloud. She was stronger now; she would continue to be stronger.

And someday she would sit down and try to decide what the hell she was going to do next, now that the future she'd kind of been planning on had decided he couldn't step out of the present.

She'd been going along with his fears for so long she'd eventually felt like it was her turn to ask something of him -- another sacrifice on his part for her. When he'd said an unequivocal no, she'd been angry at him for being selfish and for not loving her enough, whether or not those had been the reasons. When they'd fought she'd hardly cared after a while that she was hurting him. And she'd known long before it had come to that point that there would have to be a decision, because they couldn't go on like this. She'd seen the answer in his world-weary, disillusioned eyes before he'd said a word.

She'd watched as he'd packed his things, watching him move from room to room with his head bowed and his mouth sealed against more argument -- or worse, acquiescence. Watched and watched, half waiting for the moment he'd stop and sigh and admit that he couldn't do it, couldn't leave her, couldn't live alone again.

She'd watched him walk out the door, and had nearly run after him. But after everything she felt she'd given up for him, one more thing she hadn't been ready to give was more ground. And she'd stood it stubbornly.

She arrived in front of the door and, like every night, vacillated. If Lily had been around to see her she might've said something precariously insightful. Was she locking it to keep herself in? Was she hesitating in case he came back in the middle of the night, thinking the locked door might give him the impression she was trying to keep him out? She didn't know, and she didn't want to care. But it was the hardest part of the day, reaching out to lock that door. It practically forced her to wonder for a few seconds what he was doing, what he was thinking about, if he missed her, too.

The lock clicked heavily into place. She took a calming, unsatisfied breath and resisted the urge to drop her head into her hands. And headed to the couch for night number five.

Hours at work now passed like minutes, because work was the only successful distraction she had so far been able to come up with. It was the only place she could go to forget, because a part of her brain seemed able to shunt everything else aside in order to smile and make small talk for customers. She'd even stopped taking breaks and lunches because they involved a certain amount of solitude. She could lose herself for a little while in her job, think only about how well it was going, how good living on her own could be, how independent she was.

After her shift ended, she usually went across the street to buy groceries she probably wouldn't eat because it gave her a reason not to go straight home. Tonight was no exception.

Once she arrived in the apartment, she tried for a few minutes to pretend she cared about putting the eggs in the fridge and putting water on for tea. But it didn't work. It hadn't worked yet, and she wondered if it ever would. And then she was crying, and trying to remind herself that it had been mutual and that this was how her life was now and she would be all right.

It was day six, and the phone rang around eight o'clock as she was getting out of the shower. Eleven hours, forty-eight minutes. She almost didn't pick it up, but it rang ten times. And she eventually forced herself, standing stupidly in the kitchen, dripping and wrapped in a towel, to answer it.

"Hello?"

Silence. And she listened to it until she was crying again.

"I miss you," she whispered, because it was the truth. Because she'd secretly hoped it would be him. He was hurting and he'd called even though she was angry and he was angry and they'd both said things they hadn't meant. Because she loved him and wished it hadn't happened this way and she wasn't all right.

Five more seconds passed before she heard the careful hang-up on the other end. And it was twenty-three minutes before she finally convinced herself that she shouldn't try to call him back. Because he'd decided, they'd both decided, and there wasn't anything they could do.

Day seven she didn't go into work, and after half an hour of cleaning the apartment to blaring music, hoping to drown out the silence, she found one of his shirts in her dresser where she must've accidentally put it away. And gave in as she felt the tears coming.

Curled up on his side of the bed, she cried as she remembered the last time they'd made love. She wasn't strong. Not really. Not in an hour when she was ten minutes late for her cardio class because, weak as a drowning swimmer without a shore in sight, she couldn't make herself move.

It was raining. She could hear it pelting the window, hard and angry as the wind wailed inconsolably at the corners of the building. Blowing, pushing until it was finally being driven over the corners, ripping and shredding its currents on the edges in its efforts to force the building out of its way. But this wind would never be able to move the building. The building was too solid, too set in the ground. The wind would ultimately have to move on, sullen and grudging, or stop its blustering and accept the fact that the building had been standing there longer, and would be standing there long after the wind had whipped away onto another journey.

The wind was stubborn, but the building had to win. The only way for the wind to win would be to accept that the building didn't see the world as a place of freedoms and opportunities, the way the wind sometimes saw it. It would have to recognize that the building was not being selfish or unloving as it stood in the wind's way. It was simply existing as best it could, unable to move with the wind's same liberty because the building had structure and past injuries and it knew it could crumble if it tried to be something it wasn't.

And, really, the wind should've realized such things, Tifa knew suddenly. But the wind had been too wrapped up at the time in the irrefutable fact that when she'd asked him in bed, "What if I said I wanted a baby?" he'd just stared up at the ceiling. And she hadn't stopped to think about why he might be afraid, because she'd been so angry, thinking about all of the compromises she'd made for him that he'd obviously already forgotten about.

A building by its very nature could not live like the wind. And the wind would simply have to accept that if it wanted the building in its life.

Seven days, four hours, thirteen minutes. The rain was cold and vigorous, lashing into her face and soaking quickly through her coat and clothes as she rode out of Nibelheim. It had been a shock to realize that the decision had been made in her heart before it had ever come to mind. Yes, she wanted a family. But not if she couldn't have it with Vincent. She gripped the reigns in numbing fingers and squinted through dripping lashes at the hills. This couldn't be done over the phone, and since the building wasn't going to come to the wind, thinking as he probably was that there was nothing left for him to say, the wind was going to go to the building. The truth, she knew, untarnished by anger and selfish hurt, was that Vincent had done his best, sometimes better than his best, to keep her happy.

So if he'd left her it had been because his best, even his better than his best, hadn't been enough to help him. And he'd had to accept the truth, like she hadn't -- because without its structure a building fell apart and crushed everyone around it.

Though it had taken time, she'd eventually seen the truth, too: with everything he was and everything he would never be, he was still all she really wanted.

She was shivering when she arrived at the stables, her teeth chattering, her body stiff and numbed to the bone when she tried to slip to the ground. But it didn't matter, she thought as she made her way to the inn under the heavy glare of a dark sky; not as much as fixing the past for the future. Who cared if her clothes shrank, if she caught pneumonia, if her hair was tangled beyond repair? It didn't matter, as long as Vincent could still look at her and love her everyday of her life from now on.

It felt like years had passed out on the plains, and she wasn't even absolutely sure she would find him here. But she needed to see him; needed to look him in the eye and make him understand that this - they - were far from over.

As she stepped into the lobby, sopping wet and wiping her hair out of her face, the sudden heat of warm dry air nearly made her knees give out. Riding in the rain had been a stupid idea she knew as she rubbed her arms ineffectively through the jacket. Vincent was going to have a fit, thinking he'd made her do this, especially if she got sick.

She couldn't wait to laugh at him later, when he brought it up and reminded her that riding out in a rainstorm had been a stupid idea, no matter what the reason. She would cuddle up to his shoulder, she decided, and ask him what she should've done. And when he didn't have any real answer, she would laugh at him and worm her way into his arms and make him forget that they'd ever had an argument about anything.

"Is there a Vincent Valentine here?"

The man behind the desk seemed preoccupied as he thought about it. Finally, he gave a quick shrug and glanced down at his ledger. "He comes and goes. I don't watch him too closely." He frowned suddenly and looked as if he was reconsidering his answer. No one watched Vincent too closely. "I haven't seen him today," he amended, scribbling busily with a pencil. "He's probably up there."

"Thanks." She tugged on her pants, cold and clinging like a second skin, and headed for the staircase.

She couldn't help wanting to creep to the door. Maybe he'd called, but he hadn't said anything. Maybe he'd just wanted to make sure she was all right. He wasn't expecting her here -- he probably wasn't expecting her ever -- and she wasn't sure she wanted him to know until he opened the door and saw her standing in front of him, real and holding an unfinished argument in her hands.

She waited a full ten seconds after knocking before she knocked again. Wouldn't it be like him not to answer? she realized belatedly. Who did he imagine it was -- room service? She knocked a third time and it was a few moments before she finally heard a floorboard creak; muted footsteps followed. She barely had enough time to steel herself for the first glimpse of him in a week before he yanked the door open as if he hoped to startle his unsolicited caller off. Partially shadowed by the unwelcoming darkness of the room behind him, still booted and dressed in his coat, he was intimidating -- especially with his patented glare in place. She felt a sudden rush of sympathy for any staff who might've knocked on this door any time in the last few days.

His expression cleared as he recognized her, and she saw the moment in his eyes when he began to notice that she was soaked, and that her hair was plastered to her head. And then his gaze changed. Not angry, not disapproving, not even relieved; simply resigned to her presence, and the arguments he probably felt were inevitable even if she had come to find him. Without a word, he turned and disappeared back into the darkness, leaving the door open for her to come or go as she wished.

She closed the door behind her as she entered and tried to smile as he reached for a lamp, though she knew she was actually crying. She'd missed him. Oh, she'd missed him. She hadn't come to argue.

It surprised her when he began pulling at the blanket on the bed, tugging it out of the places where it was tucked under the mattress. Then he stepped back to her and, after taking swift inventory of her soaked state, began without even a 'May I?' to urge her out of her coat, and then the rest of her clothing.

It was a strange experience, touching and awkward, to have him bare her, shivering, to the air as he peeled her shirt away, rolled her pants from her legs and shucked her out of her socks. Then, before she could say a word, he furled the blanket over shoulders and wrapped it securely around her.

The first time he had done this she had been unconscious, and it had saved her life. She choked on a sob, remembering how determined he had been to protect her from herself. Maybe things had been bad, he'd seemed to imply, and maybe they would be bad again someday. Maybe they would fight and maybe they would get angry -- maybe he would be afraid and maybe she would misunderstand. But she was alive, and they loved each other even when it wasn't working. There were things still more important, she could nearly hear him saying, than one moment when things had fallen apart.

He picked her up in his arms when he was done, silent and straightforward, and carried her to the bed.

When he began to lean down, however, to place her on the mattress, she began to struggle. "No," she mumbled through frozen lips, feeling heavy and like there was ice in her veins. "I want to stay here, in your arms."

He stilled suddenly and she glanced into his face. When his eyes slid to meet hers, she felt a pang of relief. Here was her Vincent, the one who knew what she looked like in the morning, drank his tea with one sugar, and was surprisingly ticklish on his soles of his feet. She almost wanted to sigh as he sat, the muscles in his arms relaxing their stiff embrace as he placed her in his lap, pulled her close, and held her. And held her.

She curled into him reflexively, shivering and safe and grateful, knowing now that she would never have washed those sheets. Knowing that, in a little while, she was going to fall asleep and he would continue to hold her because she'd asked him to and it was something he could give her.

Knowing that when he finally got around to asking those questions -- why, why, why? -- it wouldn't matter. Because this was something -- something she'd almost forgotten, something she'd almost taken for granted. Not everyone found this, in a world where nothing worked out perfectly but some things came close. When the wind fell in love with the building that sheltered it, there were bound to be some inconsistencies. She wouldn't be around forever; he would never learn spontaneity. But she would love him, and he would smile and cook and be her best friend and curl up behind her in the night. And love her.

She'd almost forgotten how much enough could be.

Vincent was certain, moments after she fell asleep -- seven days, nine hours, twenty-one minutes -- that he would rather face the fears of having a baby than ever let her out of his sight again…