Tifa calls Cloud to pass along Reno's message. She's still hurt and angry, but there is no damn way she is giving his PHS number to a Turk.
"You got a call from Reno," she says to the voice mailbox. "He's in Healen. Says he's got work for you." She bites her lip. It feels like a storm is trying to bust out of her heart: the things she wants to say to Cloud, her impulse to reach out to him at odds with the hurt that has taken up residence there.
Her breath shudders out of her. "Cloud…how have you been?"
She hangs up. Her shoulder pulses with pain and she drops the phone onto the desk, backing against it as she allows it to wash through her. She can smell Cloud in here, and the evidence of him is everywhere: the cot where he sleeps, the stack of spare tires in the corner, the bottles of oil for Tsurugi on the shelf, and the books and articles on Geostigma scattered around. She presses the wolf's-head ring on her right hand to her lips. Cloud was here.
It passes.
Tifa has to get out of this house.
There are dishes still to do and chores to take care of before the bar is due to open that evening, but she doesn't care. She'll make it a day without getting them done. She is running out of days anyway. She feels like a trapped animal, about to chew her own arm off; she needs to get out of here.
She takes Marlene, leaving a note for the sleeping, exhausted-looking Denzel next to a glass of cool water on the bedside table. The girl has been spending most of her days with Denzel, just keeping him company as the Geostigma eats away at his strength. "We'll bring him back some flowers," Tifa says to Marlene's concerned frown.
They take the rickety old jalopy that Tifa uses to pick up supplies from the market, a vehicle that runs only because of Cloud's mechanical aptitude and their close association with the head of the WRO. But it handles well enough to take them down to Sector Five, through the narrow way that has been cleared though the rubble of the slums. The smells of dust and motor oil and burnt wood and plastic waft in through the windows that are permanently stuck at halfway open or halfway shut. Marlene watches interestedly, not talking much, as they pass shattered apartments, crumbled storefronts, glittering drifts of broken glass, the odd chimney or staircase rising into alone into midair.
The air isn't any cleaner near the church, but Tifa can feel something in her lift as she parks the truck and Marlene bounds out, excited to see the flowers. The sunlight comes through a little more clearly here, and the walls of the church gleam even beneath their grime. When they walk inside, the stained glass of the windows are full of bold color. The symbol on the wall above the altar stands out against the pale stone, an old symbol of a dying religion that someone had once told Tifa was meant to signify the idea of sacrifice and salvation.
The idea is strange to her. Sacrifice means something is lost. Salvation means something is rescued. Those are two different things, two different outcomes. Tifa doesn't think they can coexist.
They pass through the dim narthex, up the aisle between the pews. The flowers glow brightly under the sun's light, and so does Marlene's dress as she hurries forward, hands outstretched to touch their petals.
Out of the corner of her eye Tifa catches sight of another dress, perfectly pink. She hears the clink of bracelets.
She spins and stares, fists clenched, but there is nobody there. She stands frozen, unsure whether to be disappointed or unnerved.
Aerith is dead, and gone, taken up by and sunken in to the Lifestream.
Marlene exclaims from the other side of the church and Tifa startles and spins again. But it is no ghost, only a bedroll and lantern and set beside a small wooden chest that Marlene has opened, the pearly gleam of material inside. Tifa's fists clench again.
Of course Cloud came to Aerith's church when he needed to escape. She herself had just done the same thing, hadn't she?
"Does Cloud live here?" Marlene says, frowning.
"I guess he does," Tifa says, trying to make her voice neutral instead of angry, or worse, jealous. But her emotions are not doing things on her terms these days, and both rise hot and hard into her throat. "He just wants to fight alone," she whispers.
"Fight?" Marlene asks, confused.
"No." Tifa's shoulder stings, and she cradles that elbow in the palm of her good hand, hunching around her pain. Why did he run away from her? Why wouldn't he stay? Why wouldn't he even try to be there for her? Why was it more important how hard this was for him? "No. I don't think that he will."
"Tifa!" Marlene is right in front of her, her little face worried. "Are you okay? Should you sit down?"
She lets the little girl guide her back to a pew. The wood is wobbly but sturdy enough to bear her weight, and Marlene's as she sits up on her knees beside her, hands hovering over the shoulder that Tifa is obviously still favoring. She touches it, and her little fingers come away black.
"That's just like Denzel!" Marlene's eyes are huge. "Tifa, are you sick?"
Tifa takes in a deep breath, releases it shakily through her nose. She nods, and Marlene's face crumples. "No, Tifa," she says, "that's not fair." She covers her face with her hands, and the gesture is so heartbreakingly adult - the practice of grief come around again, for a child who has lost and is expecting to lose too much already. Tifa reaches out and guides Marlene closer. The girl slides off the pew and buries her face in Tifa's lap, sobbing into the soft leather as Tifa strokes her hair, her back, attempting to soothe her. The ghost of Aerith and the absence of Cloud loom around them, the lost and the left.
The doors to the church bang open. Tifa jumps and Marlene shrieks, flinching against Tifa as she spins to see who came in.
At first she sees pale hair, black leather, and thinks it is Cloud. But this man is taller, bulkier, his leather suit more form-fitting, his hair a sleek silver upward sweep instead of Cloud's yellow nimbus. Even from across the church she can see the harsh set of his features, the taunting smile and brutal eyes. There is some kind of weapon strapped to the outside of his left arm, a cumbersome-looking gauntlet strapped to a large silver rectangle that covers him from wrist to elbow. Two thick silver spikes project over the back of his fist.
Foreboding surges though her, dormant instincts from her days with AVALANCHE, and she hurries to her feet. Marlene clings to her side, still sniffing back tears. He stalks up the aisle towards them, his footsteps heavy on the wood floor, encroaching on the quiet space.
"Wanna play?" the man says, holding out one hand in invitation. Tifa sends him her harshest glare, willing her eyes to fry him on the spot. He grins and steps forward, into the flowers. "Guess that's a no. Where's Mother?"
He follows this non sequitur with a deep grimace as he notices the flowers for the first time. He holds his nose in disgust at their scent, and now Tifa knows he is bad news. "Gross!" he groans, and pins his eyes on her again, more irritated now. "Hey! Where's Mother?"
"There's no one here!" Tifa snaps.
"Fine," he huffs, and grins again. Laughs at her. "Play with me."
Wordlessly Tifa pushes Marlene away. She runs and ducks behind a stone pillar, sadly insufficient cover for any kind of fight.
Tifa reaches into her back pocket for her gloves. She pulls them on slowly, buying a little time as well as relishing the familiar motion. The sting in her shoulder fades, the ache in her heart subsiding under the rising pre-battle rush.
How long has her enemy been her own body?
How many months has she had nothing to fight but pain?
She forms her fists and holds them up. She is going to enjoy this.
He dodges her first blows and her kick, though it sets him back on his heels. He swipes at her, his strange weapon sparking with electricity across its prongs and sending her sliding backwards, into the flowers. The green scent of crushes leaves rises around her.
She digs in her heels and regains her footing. Across the expanse of the floor he smirks at her and the weapon sparks again.
She reforms her fist and launches forward, sweeping low for his legs. He jumps up and over her kick but lands with his back to her, and is too slow to dodge her blow that punts him to the side, into the wall of the church behind a row of pillars.
It's doesn't take him down, though, and he springs backward as she closes the distance. She uses the pillars and the wall to give her the high ground, launching off one or the other to pursue him down the narrow space. She drops her elbow towards the crown of his head and he ducks, right into her high kick - a clean connection with his chin that sends him flying backwards.
But he recovers quickly and catches her next punch on the molded silver casing of his weapon. They strain briefly against each other. Their eyes meet and Tifa sees with jolt that his are ice blue and slit-pupiled.
Sephiro-
He shoves back with another spark of his weapon and she disengages, falling back but badly off balance, so that he easily steps in and kicks her in the gut.
Her sweater fits loosely, so the fabric twists and deflects some of the blow, but Tifa is still winded by it and falls into an awkward crouch. But she is able to see him coming, his left arm cocked back for a heavy blow, and ducks just in time. The spikes crunch into the wall behind her, casting stone dust down into her hair and over her face.
She tackles him and he cries out in guttural surprise. Airborne, Tifa grips his collar in both hands, wrists crossed, and tucks her legs up beneath her. She plants her heels into his solar plexus and pounds him into the floor.
She lets go to spring away but a gloved hand seizes her ankle. He drags her around and then he spins her. Her back crashes through a pew once, twice, and then he increases his rotation and hurls her towards the front of the church.
Muscle memory allows her to roll her body, bringing in her limbs and orienting so that when she hits the wall she does so with her feet, perched for a moment twenty feet high, the wooden beams of the sacrificial symbol beneath her gloves. In hypercolored battle vision Tifa sees the bright patch of the flowers down below, the gray blur of the church, its vibrant pink windows, the silver hair and blue eyes of the man standing in the aisle.
She launches off the wall and gets inside his defensive block, grabbing his collar and dragging him down the aisle, bouncing his head off the floor before throwing him in the air.
In a moment she gathers herself and leaps up, takes hold of his limp body, and casts him down as hard as she can into a pile of broken wooden pews.
Dust rises in a cloud.
Tifa lands neatly on her feet, panting hard. The exertion and the hard impact with the pew before he threw her have rattled her. She is out of shape, even without the Geostigma weakening her blows. Her left arm is shaking, but the adrenaline is keeping the pain low and muted.
"Tifa!" cries Marlene, darting out from her hiding place. Tifa takes a step towards her - they really need to go, she is thinking, and then she needs to call Cloud again and tell him that she found his secret materia stash and his secret clubhouse hideout and, also, there's some guy in black leather waking around with Sephiroth's snake eyes, is that important enough to come back for? - when a tinny burst of music erupts from behind her.
The man rises from the wreckage, tossing broken bits of wood aside. He is dusty, his face screwed up in an expression of almost juvenile irritation, but there's not a scratch on him.
Tifa's heart shrinks inside her chest. She didn't even draw blood. Marlene clings to her side.
The man brings a phone out from a pocket somewhere in all that leather and flicks it open. He listens for a moment and then responds to whoever its, "She's not here." He angles away from Tifa and Marlene. "I'm not crying!"
Then he turns back their way, drops his eyes to Marlene and says, "No, I got it. I'll bring the girl."
Tifa's blood turns to ice, the fiery adrenaline fading away with each heartbeat, chased away by cold fear. The pain in her left shoulder is rising like a fire. Her arms and legs are still shaking. There's no way she can fight him and win.
He pockets the phone and raises his arm. A beam of sunlight catches a corner of the molded silver and at the tips of the thick spikes. "Where were we?"
He reaches out and Tifa has one second to brace herself before he hurls an entire pew at her face, and she can't dodge, Marlene is right behind her, so she stands her ground and with her right arm she blocks it and knocks it aside, and then he is there behind her, beside Marlene, and the spikes of his weapon power into her spine and cold electric fire races into her and knocks her forward.
He is there to catch her, to pin her against a pillar before he brings the gauntlet to bear into her gut and fires it again.
Her midsection explodes with pain so all-encompassing she hardly notices any addition to it as she blows through the pillar, as she lands hard amongst the flowers and grass. Their smooth blades press against her cheek. The scent of crushed lilies seems to cover her.
She can't breathe; her vision is half-black with spots. The man stalks over and kneels down, straddling her, pulling her up by the front of her shirt with his right arm as he draws his left arm back. Tifa can't even groan, every iota of air driven from her lungs.
The weapon cocks with a clear metallic sound right by her ear. He is going to drive it right into her temple. She still doesn't even know who this man is. Tifa is going to be killed on the ground in Aerith's flowers, inside the church that had always seemed safe, right in front of Marlene.
She can't feel anything but the unending explosion beneath her ribcage. A thousand red-hot pokers endlessly burrowing through her gut.
Something bright and round hits the man in the side of his face. It's materia. It's Marlene, throwing materia.
He turns, and carelessly drops Tifa, and walks away.
Marlene, Tifa thinks. Marlene. She rolls in the dirt and the grass and struggles to rise, struggles to breathe, fights to be able to do anything. She can see Marlene's face, tear-stained, pale, and afraid, as the man stalks through the yellow and white lilies towards her.
"Cloud," Marlene whimpers.
Cloud is not here. Tifa is not strong enough.
"Just…" Tifa gasps out, "just run!"
But it is too late to run, and she sees him grab her little girl before her world goes dark completely.