After the Meteor incident, the remaining Turks became 'Mercenaries for Hire'. After a successful few years in business, all three of them retired to some distant corners of the world, and were never seen or heard of again, which is what made Marlene's search much more difficult, as there was plenty of data available on the Turks during the Meteor incident, but there was almost nothing on them after they went their separate ways. So, she was forced to search through a sizeable portion of the WWN before she even managed to locate one of them.

"I've found one of your little friends," she said finally, tossing the computer over to Cloud. "Apparently, he went to live in the Wutai area. He supposedly has a little cottage by the sea at the south of the island..."

"Yes, Marlene, I can read!" Cloud snapped. Marlene drew back. As Cloud's condition worsened, he seemed to be getting more irritable. Probably because he's in almost constant pain and he hasn't got had any sleep. Nanaki however, was keeping the pain under control. He only spoke when someone spoke to him. Probably so he can keep the pain and his temper under control.

"Great!" Cloud chucked the computer back at Marlene, which she barely managed to catch. "It's a seven hour journey to the Wutai island, then it's a fifteen hour journey to Midgar, which leaves me and Nanaki here about twelve hours to find a cure and administer it. If one even exists!" He kicked the helm.

Nanaki and Marlene looked at each other. Nanaki spoke up first. "Cloud, maybe you should rest..."

"I'm perfectly fine!" Cloud rounded on him. He tried to make a movement with his right hand to point at himself, but he ended up having to use his left. "I...am not going to give up...even if you are prepared to accept death!

"Death..." Marlene said, quietly. "Is something that will come a whole lot quicker if you over exert yourself." There was silence for a minute, and the only thing they could here for a moment was Cloud's heavy breathing.

"Fine!" He turned on one heel, and hobbled back to his cabin. Marlene glanced at Nanaki, but looked away quickly when he seemed to grimace. Better not bother him. She pulled out the map and tried to plot the best route to the Wutai island.


About four hours into the flight, she decided to check on Cloud. She locked the controls, telling Nanaki as she did so that if anything went wrong, to get her up here as quickly as possible. She grabbed the de-fibrillator in case the worst did come to the worst, and headed for Cloud's cabin.

She paused just outside the door, gathering up her courage, and knocked, softly.

"Come in,"

She obliged and stepped into the cabin. It was completely empty except for a bunk, a chair, a desk and a wardrobe. All the lights were out, except for the desk light, in which the silhouette of Cloud sat, gazing at a photo.

She entered the room and stood behind him. "Someone you knew?" In a blink of an eye, he slammed the photo face down onto the table and turned to face her. Wrong thing to ask she cursed herself. "Um...maybe I should go...."

She was at the doorway when Cloud called out. "No...Marlene, wait a minute. Come over here...please..." She did so and stood beside him. He picked up the photo and showed it to her. "Do you know who this is?"

"Someone from Avalanche, I take it?"

"Yes...her name was Tifa Lockheart..." He paused, and took a deep breath. "And I loved her..."

"Look, maybe this is something that I shouldn't hear, and..."

"No...no...I have to tell someone...and that someone might as well be you..." His eyes seemed to go blank, as if he was remembering the past. "We were childhood friends. We grew up in the same town together...and we ended up fighting to save the planet together..."

"During that time, I fell in love with a woman called Aeris, who turned out to be one of the Ancients, perhaps the last of the Ancients. And then...she was murdered..."

"After her death, there were two things that kept me going, the desire for revenge, and Tifa, who supported me. From that point on, we became more than just friends. We became lovers..."

"After the Meteor incident, we planned to get married, however, we had to do some mopping up first, mainly the shutting down of the Corral Reactor."

A tear came to his eye. "The mountain path was heavily guarded, so we were forced to climb the mountains directly to get there. It was just me and Tifa, with a job to do. We were on a very narrow ledge, when...they found us..."

The entire mountainside was bombarded with rockets and machine guns. In the chaos, Tifa slipped and fell. I managed to grab hold of her, but the intensity of the bombardment increased. When I looked directly into her eyes, they were begging me not to let go, not to let her fall to her death. However...when a rocket exploded near me, I lost my grip..." The words seemed to catch in his throat. "I...killed...her..."

She tried to put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but he wasn't finished. "I had nothing to keep me going. No-one to support me, no one to get revenge on but myself. And then..." He rounded on Marlene. "Then I heard that your father had disappeared, and that you were now and orphan. I didn't want to take you in but I did, as a favour to Barret. Do you know what it's like to have a screaming five year old girl in the house when you have loads of other things on your mind?! You made my life HELL!!!!"

Marlene was shocked by all this. She knew she shouldn't have taken Cloud for granted, but she never knew that he had bottled up all this grief for ten years. She whispered, "It wasn't your fault that she died..."

She put her arms around him, and Cloud, having released all the anger inside him, began to weep...