Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy IV

Well, hello everyone! It's been three years and three days which has been about enough time for me to age, still not get any taller, have at least seventy uni-based breakdowns, and write some more prompts! I had actually planned to begin updating again on Tifa's birthday last month but... exams and stuff. Yeah, I hate them too.

An (extremely) belated thank you to CupofTeaforAliceandHatter, sunflowerspot, SpicyWifey and annroy for your reviews on the last chapter! I'm super, super sorry it's taken me three years... If it makes you feel any better, I've only managed to reply to about three emails in that time!

Since I'm a glutton for angst, that's what we've got coming up first! Apologies to all those who aren't a fan!

Enjoy!

062. Fingertips

Another grey day in Edge.

I awoke too early for my liking and stretched weary limbs, looking out the window at the dreary, cloudy sky. The bed was cold as soon as I sat up, and I had no wish to stay in it any longer.

I washed and changed and readied myself for the day. I dressed in the combat clothes I hadn't had to fight in for years. No one needed the help of my fists any more.

Marlene and Denzel awoke next and, with some coaxing, they were dressed and ready and off to school. Every morning Marlene greeted me with a bright smile, a helping hand with the cooking, and wrestled to get Denzel out of bed. And Denzel grumpily tramped downstairs, moodily ate breakfast, but finally woke up enough to do the washing up and remind Marlene to leave on time. They were the light in my grey, dull life.

Next came the empty hours until opening time. I washed the bar, twice, and all the glasses. Nothing ever fixed the slight stickiness of the floorboards. The seats had some irreparable stains here and there. The walls needed a lick of paint, but I didn't have the money to close the bar to do it. Like the sky outside, the bar was distinctly grey. The floor has faded to a nondescript colour, and the walls were once white, but now peeled around the edges and had been dulled by the people who leaned on them, threw drinks at them, and crashed against them.

I looked at the bar and sighed. It was my life, and it looked as bland as I felt.

I retreated upstairs, away from the reminder of potential being sucked from my life. I passed Marlene and Denzel's room. It was bright, with drawings and pastel sheets and furiously bold toys. There was the potential in the house; all the hopes of the future crammed into one small room. I walked straight past it. My room was spartan, with a bed too big for just me. The office was sparse too, with a desk full of paperwork I couldn't complete alone. And a single picture frame, with dead, white lilies next to it. It was a photo of our family, as I pictured it. As others saw it. As it never was. And my diary, a minefield of self-pity that I rarely let myself fall back into, lay under the shade of the dead flowers.

Yuffie was calling again. Vincent was ticking her off.

"Sure, Yuffie. Of course you can come round."

I was so tired. I loved my friends, but I just wanted to scream. The happiness I'd worked so hard for was perpetually at my fingertips. It was the one thing I was fixated on, the one thing I would never reach.

I felt the tears brimming in my eyes. The weight of this grey room and the memories it forced me to face pressed down on me; crushing my lungs, stopping my breath. He was in her church, not our house.

I cleaned the bar again, and was checking the taps for the second time when Yuffie flew in, all emotion and bright colour and more Vincent problems.

"...and so I told him he was being an ass, right?"

It took her an hour of ranting to say that Vincent misunderstood something she said in Wutaian, again.

"Yuffie, you know I love you, but you should calm down and go back and talk to him. It's a misunderstanding - not something to break up over."

She looked at me with a pout as I handed her a glass of water. She took it, and all I could think that it was another glass to clean.

We chatted for an hour more, before Vincent stormed in with a whirl of her cape, and took her away. She had such a bemusing look of love and anger as she was taken away by the man she so obviously loved with all her heart. It made me jealous that she had at least had something real to cling on to.

I was cleaning the glass and staring out at the grey sky when I heard the PDA vibrate weakly from under the bar. It hadn't done that in years.

It was him. I dropped the glass and launched myself across the bar just to pick it up in time. I'd have to clean that up later.

"Cloud? Is that you?" My voice croaked

"Yeah, it's me."

There was a pause.

"Where-"

"Will you help? I need someone to help me."

I flushed. I pinched myself. He needed my help?

"Okay." The bar could wait.

"I'll be over in half an hour. Get ready."

"Cloud-" He hung up. I was taken aback by the flat tone, like a slap back to reality, or gravity being taken out from under my feet.

I spent an anxious 30 minutes waiting for him. I didn't even bother to clean up the shattered glass at my feet, I just stepped over it and put on my armour, digging out my old gloves.

He was three minutes late.

He stepped into my grey bar and suddenly, the walls looked whiter. My feet didn't stick to the floor with every step. The bar wasn't so perpetually dirty. He appeared the same as ever. Handsome, the boy from my childhood.

"Are you ready?"

"Always."

"I need help eliminating a monster east of Wutai. Yuffie wasn't available, and Vincent was with her. Barrett wasn't picking up; Red's busy, Reeve can't help me in this, Shelke was unavailable..."

He asked them all, before me. Even Shelke - someone he barely knew. It was like my heart fell all the way from my throat to the pit of my stomach in three seconds, and then seemed to come up through my mouth again. Now he was speaking again; he appeared older. Lines next to his mouth, and a slightly more furrowed brow. I noticed the paint peeling, just behind his ear, too. And there was a patch of sticky beer dried on the floorboards behind his foot. There was a slouch in his shoulders that wasn't there the last time I saw him.

"... And so that left you." I was snapped out of my revere by his voice. It seemed duller than the hopeful voice I'd always remembered from when we were younger.

"And you called me because there was no one else." My voice was flat. I took the gloves off of my hands, and the pads off my knees and elbows. I pulled off the sturdy boots from my feet, sliding back into my slippers, and sighed. He just looked at me dumbly.

Avoiding looking at him with all my might, I stooped down to gather up the glass, pricking my fingers twice whilst gathering the shards, and placing them in a napkin.

He still said nothing.

"You know, Cloud," I began, throwing the shards of glass in the bin, "I thought you called me because you needed me."

"But I-" he began, but I held up a bleeding finger to silence him.

"But instead, everyone else was busy, so you called me as a last resort. Meanwhile, I live here in our house, raising our children, running our bar..."

"I-" I held up my finger again. A drop of blood splattered on the floor in the intervening silence.

"I'm done with waiting for you. Join us, as a family, or leave for good." I offered my ultimatum and folded my arms. I knew it wasn't right to do this, to force such a decision, but I didn't know what else to do. Cloud was dumb, he didn't understand people. Perhaps this way he'd comprehend why I was so upset, why I couldn't move past the chance of a life with him and see that there might be other lives out there for me. It was only when I looked down that I noticed that blood has smeared on my pale arms.

He walked past me, upstairs, and I heard his heavy steps slowly make their way to our room.

He returned a moment later, without the heavy weaponry and armour, but with a bandage in one hand.

He took my fingertips and bound them up.

"I'll stay. I'm staying. I'm sorry but-"

"You needed the time?" I raised an eyebrow.

He nodded solemnly, not meeting my eyes. The mako green of his eyes seemed duller, and more like the Cloud I had known.

I had the life I wanted in my hands but, as I looked into the blank eyes before me, I wondered if I preferred life I'd always imagined with him, the one just beyond my fingertips.

Yeah, I know. I'm a super downer.

Mwhahahahaha

Thanks for reading! Please follow for more and review if you've got time. Thanks!