She's painting the kids' room. It needs it, for one thing: the plain gray paint they bought for cheap from the WRO when they were building the place has gone dingy and dull over the two years since. And they all need a project. It's the middle of a miserably wet and rainy week: the provisional school that Marlene goes to has shut down because of leaks, and there are barely any deliveries for Cloud. And also (this thought a small clear seed at the bottom of all of Tifa's thoughts) she wants Denzel to get the experience of painting his own room. Before the end.
"Denzel," she says, "use the roller."
"Nah," he tells her. "I like the brush." He gobs on paint in big sloppy swatches.
Tifa winces and smiles. "Well, since I won't be looking at it." The words come unthinkingly but she hears Cloud inhale sharply from where he's taping off the doorjamb. "Since it's not my room," she tacks on hurriedly. But the damage is already probably done, and Tifa feels the same flush of guilt married to anger that keeps coming over her ever since Cloud found out about her Geostigma.
She falls back on an old standby: changing the subject. "When I was a kid," she says to Denzel and Marlene, "my father let me paint my room. But I was really messy and got paint all over the floorboards, and he made me sand it off."
"What color was it?" Marlene asks.
Tifa points at the wall the kids are working on. "Blue!"
Denzel doesn't laugh, but he smiles, almost a grin. "So that's why you bought this color."
"Blue," Tifa says, "is an excellent color." And it is: the WRO paint is cheap as ever but comes in a lot more colors now, and this, a perfect sky blue, is cheerful and bright. Next to the dull gray it is covering over, it looks like the sky on the day after a storm on the mountain.
Cloud glances at her without turning around, a quick flash of his glowing eyes. Which are also blue, of course, tinted with the green mako. Maybe, Tifa muses, she should put his office-slash-bedroom next on the painting to-do list. Dingy gray can't be good for the psyche. And poor Cloud's psyche needed all the help it could get.
Now that he knows about the Geostigma, he has changed again. She can tell that he's trying to act as normal as possible, but he is angry. She can tell by the way he walks, a heavy combative tread; by the tone of his voice, even though he's hardly been talking; by the way he kicks Fenrir into gear in the mornings and drives away like he's heading towards a fight. He's gone longer and more often, comes back covered in dust and mud and sometimes monster guts.
He isn't really angry at Tifa. He is angry at the disease, at the world maybe. But she's the medium of this new pain, and she's caught in the crossfire of his helpless rage. He can barely look at her.
Marlene's swathe of paint soon runs into Denzel's, and they race to see who can paint higher, faster. Marlene is giggling outright; Denzel still has only that hidden smile. Tifa grins and even Cloud has a glint of mirth in his eyes. Two days ago he might even have laughed.
Tifa is angry too. She's angry that she couldn't keep her secret a longer; she is angry that Denzel will die first; she is angry that Cloud is doing this wounded-animal routine. But there is no one to fight against, and she isn't dead yet, and surely, by this point, Tifa knows how to just go on.
It is a week later when she finds out that she doesn't.
It's late. Marlene and Denzel are both in bed already; Tifa should sleep - she feels about ninety years old tonight - but Cloud hasn't come home yet. She can't stop thinking about that night when she finally told him she was sick, and how he just sat with her, giving her his warmth and his presence, comforting her.
Why won't he do that anymore?
This distance is exactly what she feared would happen.
So she wraps her blanket around her shoulders and waits at the kitchen table like an angry wife, her heart a ball of barbed wire in her chest; and when he finally comes back, parks Fenrir in the garage, comes through the back door with his muddy boots in one hand, the look on her face stops him cold.
"Welcome home," she says quietly.
He eyes her warily, nods once, and makes for the stairs.
"I want to talk to you." Her voice lashes across the room. He stops again, but won't turn to face her.
"What about?" he finally responds.
How maybe you hate me after all. Tifa twists her fingers beneath the blanket, pain zinging through her shoulder. "Can you just look at me, Cloud?"
He stiffens, surprised by her request. Slowly he turns, peering at her resentfully through his bangs. Now she doesn't feel like an angry wife; she feels like his mother, battling a teenager's bad attitude.
"How was your day?" she asks, picking the blandest topic she can think of, trying to make it easy on him.
"Uh, fine."
"What did you do?"
He looks at her like she's an idiot, and Tifa has to breathe deep to make room for the pain that contemptuous expression arrows into her. "Deliveries," he answers.
"Where did you go? What did you see?"
"Tifa, what's the point of this? None of this means anything," he snaps.
"We used to talk about this stuff all the time," Tifa reminds him, "we just used to talk, Cloud! Now you can barely look at me-"
He flinches, guilt running across his face.
"- and it's like you don't even want to be here anymore." Tifa keeps her eyes trained on him, looking for some hint of more than just guilt, but Cloud, true to form, turns and walks towards the stairs. Running away from her.
Tifa's heart is cutting its way out of her chest wit every beat.
"You're not even the one who's dying!" she snaps, and for a second, two, three, she is so angry that she doesn't regret the words.
But then Cloud shutters up right in front of her, eyes glowing bright and unreadable, mouth a thin line, face impassive. She sees him swallow, her words going right down into his belly, words he will never forget, her words that are going to outlive her in his memory.
Her insides feel like they're twisting in the grip of some huge hand. "Wait, Cloud-" she begins, but he shakes his head and turns on one boot and walks away from her. "Wait!" she cries out to his back, but he doesn't turn back. He walks out, back into the garage, and a minute later - he has to put his boots back on - Fenrir roars to life. Cloud drives away from Seventh Heaven.
Tifa is shaking and breathing too hard. She cradles the elbow of her bad arm in her hand and a wave of self-pity and self-loathing and pathetic, childlike bewilderment wells up inside of her. "No," she says, and begins to cry.
He doesn't come back that night or the next and Tifa, out of a bloody-minded stubbornness that she knows won't serve her well, doesn't call him. She isn't able to sleep at all before the pain comes again, driving her out of bed and into laps around the living room, the kitchen, the garage.
This last one smells of laundry detergent and motor oil. The bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling cast a dim yellow gleam over everything. The clothes hanging on the wires strung in one corner are dry; if Tifa's arm weren't screaming she could take them down and fold them. She'll have to have Marlene or Denzel do it tomorrow.
She leans against the washing machine and gazes across the grimy concrete floor to the workbench, and the spattering of oil that marks where Cloud parks Fenrir.
"Stupid bike," she mutters out loud. "His one true love." Too bad he rode away on it. If he'd walked, she could have keyed it or something. Tifa was here.
The idea has appeal. Tifa goes to workbench, rummages through Cloud's junk - organized according to a system that only he knows - until she unearths a permanent marker. Its tip is blunted with use but when she tests it on the wood of the bench, it leaves a dark fat line.
She turns the line into the crossbar of the T. TIFA WAS HERE, she scribbles right across Cloud's space, where he can't help but see it.
The next morning dawns rather brightly, for a day in Edge. It feels like a personal insult as Tifa buckles down to take care of the pile of dishes waiting for her behind the bar. Her arm stings with the movement, but compared to the obvious agony that had wracked Denzel just half an hour ago, it's nothing. Marlene is upstairs with him now, keeping a cold cloth on his forehead, making sure he isn't alone. It's all they can do for him now.
The phone in Cloud's room rings as she clatters rocks glasses together in the soapy water. "He's not here anymore," she sing-songs viciously.
But it rings, and rings. It goes silent, and then starts ringing again. Tifa thinks of Denzel in pain in the room down the hall, trying to sleep, and grabs a dishtowel to violently wipe her hands dry. She manages to keep herself from stomping up the stairs, but it's a near thing.
She snatches up the phone. "Strife Delivery Service, how can I..?"
The voice on the far end if jovial, familiar, obnoxious.
She huffs a laugh with no actual mirth. "Yeah," she says. "I remember you."