~Half Forgotten Memories~
ch. 4-Insanity
by:GoldenSilence
A/N=*takes a deep breath*...SelphieSelphieSelphieSelphieSelphie..there,I got it out of my system.:)So I had better not mention anything ff8 again in this chapter!
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Trembling like a leaf in the wind, Tifa took her hands off her ears. When the voice had been there, it had seemed to resound off the wall; booming at her. Now it was gone. Just like that. Tifa didn't even bother to search for the apparition that the voice belonged to-because something inside her said that there wasn't one.
She want to think about what it had said either. How could she have killed Cloud?She couldn't remember doing anything like that. Tifa repeated the facts over and over again in her head. He had been killed after Sephiroth had summoned him for one last fight..lost in space. She had been miles away from him. She had nothing to do with it.
Besides, if she had killed Cloud(just the thought of it made Tifa shiver) then it certainly wouldn't be something she was able to forget..ever. No matter what. A small bit of comfort in spite of the bleakness of it all came to her with her reasoning.
"At the funeral didn't you wish to have your memories of Cloud erased so you wouldn't have to feel any pain?Maybe your wish came true. Maybe the memories have disintigrated. Maybe you were the murderer. Maybe all you can remember are lies. Lies told so many times you believe them."
The voice was back, grating on Tifa's ears-and nerves. Tifa didn't even put her hands over her ears this time. Desperate to get rid of the voice, she ran, wanting to put distance between her and this horrible thing that was questioning everything she believed.
Tifa flew into the bathroom panting, locked the door behind her, and turned on the bathtub; some illogical part of her thinking that the voice was something that could be shut out.
Soon, the bathroom was filled with the drone of the rushing water as it splashed into the tub. Tifa sat in the middle of it, not even realizing the steam and heat coming from the liquid, soaking into her skin and almost seeming to absorb it. All she realized or cared about was that the voice was gone and she was safe.
Tifa's limbs and even, eventually, her mind, slowly began to calm down from her previously tense and anxious state.
I just imagined it, she told herself.
And in her little haven full of soapsuds and steaming water, it almost seemed possible. Everything outside the cramped bathroom felt like it had ceased to exsist. Tifa began to scrub herself with the soap and wash her hair, feeling a whole lot better. Everything that had taken place that morning just seemed surreal. She wondered if she had simply dreamt the whole thing.
Her reverie didn't last long. The sense of doubt that had been several times multiplied when the dove had died and the voice had spoken came back faintly.
"What if?" it whispered. "What if you did kill Cloud?"
Tifa tried to shake off her lack of assuredness by staring at her bathroom mirror. She was half surprised to see the brown eyed, red haired girl there-her normal reflection. After all that had happened, she certainly didn't feel normal.
"You didn't imagine me, you can't ignore me. My presense is forever..and I won't ever go away...but you will.."
The water, which had been a still source of calm up 'till now suddenly became a wavy and agitated. Tifa's senses were all screaming at her to move, but she stayed frozen in place, either out of fear-or she had a sinking feeling, because she simply couldn't.
The waves began to bigger and bigger, reaching at first only her nose, then her eyes, next her forehead-they quickly accompased gigantic proportions; slapping and slushing back and forth, spilling over the tub and slopping unto the floor. The forthcoming wave was the biggest of all and it went over her head, consuming all of her underneath its depths. Tifa struggled to break to the top, but it was akin to being stuck in a tub of glue- she couldn't move an inch.
"It's going to drown me!" she thought wildly, not even sure what "it" was..only that "it" had a voice that she never, ever wished to hear again. Intent on saving her life, Tifa began searching for the drain to the tub. The tub felt like a fathomless ocean..though Tifa was sure there was a cement bottom somewhere- she was positive her toes weren't scraping it. Why, she couldn't even see the walls of the tub.
Even underneath the water, Tifa could hear the sound of knuckles on wood.
"Tifa?I was wondering if perhaps we could talk-about you and Cloud-and me and..Lucrecia. You can't keep looking yourself up in here forever because.." The voice stopped as Tifa's screams reached its ears. "Tifa?Is that you?"
Tifa wanted to shout and scream some more, but she couldn't-instead, she settled for flailing and thrashing as hard as she could. The next minute, Tifa was breathing in gasps of air at the surface. The water, as if it had never tried to drown her, had become calm again.
Tifa grabbed the soap and jumped out of the bathtub like a highly wound up coil of spring.
"Where are you?" Tifa wasn't directing this at the person on the other side of the door, but at the voice.
Yanking on a bathrobe, unlocking the door to the bathroom, and wielding her ivory soap in one hand, Tifa lost all sense of reason as she began to yell back at the top of her lungs to the voice; enraged that it would come back and horrified to hear what it had to say.
At the first sign of movement in her room, the soap went hurdling through the air, hitting..Vincent?
Sure enough, Vincent was standing outside the bathroom door, rubbing his eyes with one hand to try and get the soap out of them and with the other hand, holding the bar of soap Tifa had pitched.
"Tifa? What's the matter?"
"I..I.." Tifa stammered, trying to put into words what had been happening. I..I..I, she mocked herself silently inside her head. Let's try in the past thirty minutes, I've killed a bird, been told I am a murderer, almost been murdered, and chased an unknown voice with a bar of soap.
Since he had finally cleared the soap out of his eyes, Vincent got a good chance to look at Tifa and take in the surroundings. She was clad in only a bathrobe and her hair, in total disarray, was still soaking wet and dripping. Her feet and fingers were wrinkled like prunes. Her eyes were the size of saucers- as if she was scared of something or someone. She looked like a complete wreck, not to mention the floor around her; which was littered with paper towels, and a broken coffee mug. What the hell had happened to her?
Thinking she was too traumatized to have heard him the first time, Vincent voiced his worries out loud again. "Tifa?What happened?"
Tifa, unable to say anything, wordlessly pointed to the windowsill where the dove still lay prone.
Vincent's response was pretty matter of a fact. "A dead bird?So that's what smells in here." He frowned at Tifa. "That wasn't what you were shouting about though-was it?"
Tifa just shook her head. Vincent neatly picked up the dove and deposited it in the trash. "Alright, guts and gore disposed of. You can stop looking like you've seen a ghost now."
Tifa still said nothing. Vincent raised his eyebrows. "Or not." Hyne help him, Tifa looked so desperate-as if she wanted to tell him something with all her soul but didn't know how to form the words. It reminded him of Lucrecia-when she had come to tell him that she was pre-but then that was something that Vincent did not need to run over in his mind once more. He had already done so thousands of times.
Then looking at Tifa's shaking form, it hit Vincent. She must have had a nightmare about Cloud. Of course-that had to be it. Her memories of Cloud no doubt tortured her as much as Vincent's memories of Lucrecia. When Vincent spoke, it was with a gentleness alien to his curt way of speaking. "You were remembering Cloud-weren't you?"
"That was part of it..but there was something else too..and them combined..."
Tifa felt salty water met her lips and was rather surprised to realize that she was crying. Crying was not an experience Tifa was used to- or something that she did often, for that matter.
Vincent saw the tears and was every bit as surprised as she was. Poor Tifa. She was more affected by the deaths than him or anyone else in the gang would ever be. She had really loved Cloud, he thought with only a twing of his past jealousness. After all, it was hard to be jealous of a man that was dead. And it was hard to be jealous when Vincent refused to believe that he loved Tifa in the first place. Which was partially true-he loved Tifa in second place-second place after Lucrecia.
Half sobbing, she continued on, wanting Vincent to know what had happened but not sure how to tell him. "Vincent?Did you hear..anything else..a few minutes ago?"
"Besides your screams?"
"Yeah."
Vincent shook his head. "No. No other noise. Though, not much could be audible over the racket you were making."
If Tifa had felt scared before, it was nothing to what she felt now. He didn't hear anything?She had been thrashing and causing enough commotion to wake half of the hotel. Was he joking with her?To make sure, Tifa asked one more time.
"Nothing?"
"No". And that was that. Not paying any attention to where she was putting her feet, the only thing Tifa was aware of was the fact she wanted to get out of this room..pronto. Away from whatever strange phenomina was in it.
Vincent looked at her confused as she tried to brush past him.
"Um, Tifa?Just where are you planning on going in your bathrobe?"
"Shera..got to see a Shera.."
Tifa's voice was taking on a panicky note. It wasn't well known, but Shera had once been a doctor. She could help Tifa. She had to be able to.
Vincent yanked one of her wrists to stop her from leaving.
"Not in that state you aren't. Tifa, talk to me." Vincent had asked her twice to talk-in the past half an hour, but Tifa didn't notice that either.
She looked up at him, tears still flowing down her cheeks as she wobbled on her feet. Vincent reached out a hand to steady her, and that was when she completely lost it. Her feet slid out from under her as she slipped over a paper towel and into his arms.
Vincent held her stiffly-going against the instinct to crush her close and simply keeping her at an almost arm's length instead. The few tears that Tifa was desperately trying to control(and was a little bit ashamed of) rapidly evolved into a torrent.
It was strange, but Tifa had always felt protected in Vincent's arms(as she had always thought she would have in Cloud's when he had still been alive). There was no sense of protection now. Tifa roughly pushed Vincent away and made for the door.
"Murderer". The voice was booming even louder than before, as if it wanted to proclaim to the world this fact. "Can't hide from me, can you?Can't hide from the truth either.."
"I'M NOT HIDING!" Tifa roared back. "THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED!"
Vincent looked like someone had just slapped him. Taking hold of her again, he began to shake her violently.
"Tifa?Tifa?Snap out of it!"
"Did you hear it?Did you hear what it said?" Tifa was hysterical.
What was WRONG with her?Tifa was really starting to scare him. Who did she hear?Cloud's voice?Vincent was delusional, he lived in his dreams of Lucrecia-but at least he never heard her. And Tifa acted as if it wasn't just all inside her head..
Vincent tried his best to sound calm, hoping that maybe if he did, she would calm down too..and come back to her senses.
"Of course I heard something. You kept screaming at yourself."
"No, not me!The other voice!Didn't you hear it?"
Vincent immediately stopped shaking her and stepped back like she was something contagious.
" Tifa, there wasn't any other voice. Just you, shouting yourself hoarse."
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A/N=Review or I'll mention Selphie again.(now there's a threat if ever I heard one..j/k..but please do review, they are very appreciated.:))
ch. 4-Insanity
by:GoldenSilence
A/N=*takes a deep breath*...SelphieSelphieSelphieSelphieSelphie..there,I got it out of my system.:)So I had better not mention anything ff8 again in this chapter!
--------
Trembling like a leaf in the wind, Tifa took her hands off her ears. When the voice had been there, it had seemed to resound off the wall; booming at her. Now it was gone. Just like that. Tifa didn't even bother to search for the apparition that the voice belonged to-because something inside her said that there wasn't one.
She want to think about what it had said either. How could she have killed Cloud?She couldn't remember doing anything like that. Tifa repeated the facts over and over again in her head. He had been killed after Sephiroth had summoned him for one last fight..lost in space. She had been miles away from him. She had nothing to do with it.
Besides, if she had killed Cloud(just the thought of it made Tifa shiver) then it certainly wouldn't be something she was able to forget..ever. No matter what. A small bit of comfort in spite of the bleakness of it all came to her with her reasoning.
"At the funeral didn't you wish to have your memories of Cloud erased so you wouldn't have to feel any pain?Maybe your wish came true. Maybe the memories have disintigrated. Maybe you were the murderer. Maybe all you can remember are lies. Lies told so many times you believe them."
The voice was back, grating on Tifa's ears-and nerves. Tifa didn't even put her hands over her ears this time. Desperate to get rid of the voice, she ran, wanting to put distance between her and this horrible thing that was questioning everything she believed.
Tifa flew into the bathroom panting, locked the door behind her, and turned on the bathtub; some illogical part of her thinking that the voice was something that could be shut out.
Soon, the bathroom was filled with the drone of the rushing water as it splashed into the tub. Tifa sat in the middle of it, not even realizing the steam and heat coming from the liquid, soaking into her skin and almost seeming to absorb it. All she realized or cared about was that the voice was gone and she was safe.
Tifa's limbs and even, eventually, her mind, slowly began to calm down from her previously tense and anxious state.
I just imagined it, she told herself.
And in her little haven full of soapsuds and steaming water, it almost seemed possible. Everything outside the cramped bathroom felt like it had ceased to exsist. Tifa began to scrub herself with the soap and wash her hair, feeling a whole lot better. Everything that had taken place that morning just seemed surreal. She wondered if she had simply dreamt the whole thing.
Her reverie didn't last long. The sense of doubt that had been several times multiplied when the dove had died and the voice had spoken came back faintly.
"What if?" it whispered. "What if you did kill Cloud?"
Tifa tried to shake off her lack of assuredness by staring at her bathroom mirror. She was half surprised to see the brown eyed, red haired girl there-her normal reflection. After all that had happened, she certainly didn't feel normal.
"You didn't imagine me, you can't ignore me. My presense is forever..and I won't ever go away...but you will.."
The water, which had been a still source of calm up 'till now suddenly became a wavy and agitated. Tifa's senses were all screaming at her to move, but she stayed frozen in place, either out of fear-or she had a sinking feeling, because she simply couldn't.
The waves began to bigger and bigger, reaching at first only her nose, then her eyes, next her forehead-they quickly accompased gigantic proportions; slapping and slushing back and forth, spilling over the tub and slopping unto the floor. The forthcoming wave was the biggest of all and it went over her head, consuming all of her underneath its depths. Tifa struggled to break to the top, but it was akin to being stuck in a tub of glue- she couldn't move an inch.
"It's going to drown me!" she thought wildly, not even sure what "it" was..only that "it" had a voice that she never, ever wished to hear again. Intent on saving her life, Tifa began searching for the drain to the tub. The tub felt like a fathomless ocean..though Tifa was sure there was a cement bottom somewhere- she was positive her toes weren't scraping it. Why, she couldn't even see the walls of the tub.
Even underneath the water, Tifa could hear the sound of knuckles on wood.
"Tifa?I was wondering if perhaps we could talk-about you and Cloud-and me and..Lucrecia. You can't keep looking yourself up in here forever because.." The voice stopped as Tifa's screams reached its ears. "Tifa?Is that you?"
Tifa wanted to shout and scream some more, but she couldn't-instead, she settled for flailing and thrashing as hard as she could. The next minute, Tifa was breathing in gasps of air at the surface. The water, as if it had never tried to drown her, had become calm again.
Tifa grabbed the soap and jumped out of the bathtub like a highly wound up coil of spring.
"Where are you?" Tifa wasn't directing this at the person on the other side of the door, but at the voice.
Yanking on a bathrobe, unlocking the door to the bathroom, and wielding her ivory soap in one hand, Tifa lost all sense of reason as she began to yell back at the top of her lungs to the voice; enraged that it would come back and horrified to hear what it had to say.
At the first sign of movement in her room, the soap went hurdling through the air, hitting..Vincent?
Sure enough, Vincent was standing outside the bathroom door, rubbing his eyes with one hand to try and get the soap out of them and with the other hand, holding the bar of soap Tifa had pitched.
"Tifa? What's the matter?"
"I..I.." Tifa stammered, trying to put into words what had been happening. I..I..I, she mocked herself silently inside her head. Let's try in the past thirty minutes, I've killed a bird, been told I am a murderer, almost been murdered, and chased an unknown voice with a bar of soap.
Since he had finally cleared the soap out of his eyes, Vincent got a good chance to look at Tifa and take in the surroundings. She was clad in only a bathrobe and her hair, in total disarray, was still soaking wet and dripping. Her feet and fingers were wrinkled like prunes. Her eyes were the size of saucers- as if she was scared of something or someone. She looked like a complete wreck, not to mention the floor around her; which was littered with paper towels, and a broken coffee mug. What the hell had happened to her?
Thinking she was too traumatized to have heard him the first time, Vincent voiced his worries out loud again. "Tifa?What happened?"
Tifa, unable to say anything, wordlessly pointed to the windowsill where the dove still lay prone.
Vincent's response was pretty matter of a fact. "A dead bird?So that's what smells in here." He frowned at Tifa. "That wasn't what you were shouting about though-was it?"
Tifa just shook her head. Vincent neatly picked up the dove and deposited it in the trash. "Alright, guts and gore disposed of. You can stop looking like you've seen a ghost now."
Tifa still said nothing. Vincent raised his eyebrows. "Or not." Hyne help him, Tifa looked so desperate-as if she wanted to tell him something with all her soul but didn't know how to form the words. It reminded him of Lucrecia-when she had come to tell him that she was pre-but then that was something that Vincent did not need to run over in his mind once more. He had already done so thousands of times.
Then looking at Tifa's shaking form, it hit Vincent. She must have had a nightmare about Cloud. Of course-that had to be it. Her memories of Cloud no doubt tortured her as much as Vincent's memories of Lucrecia. When Vincent spoke, it was with a gentleness alien to his curt way of speaking. "You were remembering Cloud-weren't you?"
"That was part of it..but there was something else too..and them combined..."
Tifa felt salty water met her lips and was rather surprised to realize that she was crying. Crying was not an experience Tifa was used to- or something that she did often, for that matter.
Vincent saw the tears and was every bit as surprised as she was. Poor Tifa. She was more affected by the deaths than him or anyone else in the gang would ever be. She had really loved Cloud, he thought with only a twing of his past jealousness. After all, it was hard to be jealous of a man that was dead. And it was hard to be jealous when Vincent refused to believe that he loved Tifa in the first place. Which was partially true-he loved Tifa in second place-second place after Lucrecia.
Half sobbing, she continued on, wanting Vincent to know what had happened but not sure how to tell him. "Vincent?Did you hear..anything else..a few minutes ago?"
"Besides your screams?"
"Yeah."
Vincent shook his head. "No. No other noise. Though, not much could be audible over the racket you were making."
If Tifa had felt scared before, it was nothing to what she felt now. He didn't hear anything?She had been thrashing and causing enough commotion to wake half of the hotel. Was he joking with her?To make sure, Tifa asked one more time.
"Nothing?"
"No". And that was that. Not paying any attention to where she was putting her feet, the only thing Tifa was aware of was the fact she wanted to get out of this room..pronto. Away from whatever strange phenomina was in it.
Vincent looked at her confused as she tried to brush past him.
"Um, Tifa?Just where are you planning on going in your bathrobe?"
"Shera..got to see a Shera.."
Tifa's voice was taking on a panicky note. It wasn't well known, but Shera had once been a doctor. She could help Tifa. She had to be able to.
Vincent yanked one of her wrists to stop her from leaving.
"Not in that state you aren't. Tifa, talk to me." Vincent had asked her twice to talk-in the past half an hour, but Tifa didn't notice that either.
She looked up at him, tears still flowing down her cheeks as she wobbled on her feet. Vincent reached out a hand to steady her, and that was when she completely lost it. Her feet slid out from under her as she slipped over a paper towel and into his arms.
Vincent held her stiffly-going against the instinct to crush her close and simply keeping her at an almost arm's length instead. The few tears that Tifa was desperately trying to control(and was a little bit ashamed of) rapidly evolved into a torrent.
It was strange, but Tifa had always felt protected in Vincent's arms(as she had always thought she would have in Cloud's when he had still been alive). There was no sense of protection now. Tifa roughly pushed Vincent away and made for the door.
"Murderer". The voice was booming even louder than before, as if it wanted to proclaim to the world this fact. "Can't hide from me, can you?Can't hide from the truth either.."
"I'M NOT HIDING!" Tifa roared back. "THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED!"
Vincent looked like someone had just slapped him. Taking hold of her again, he began to shake her violently.
"Tifa?Tifa?Snap out of it!"
"Did you hear it?Did you hear what it said?" Tifa was hysterical.
What was WRONG with her?Tifa was really starting to scare him. Who did she hear?Cloud's voice?Vincent was delusional, he lived in his dreams of Lucrecia-but at least he never heard her. And Tifa acted as if it wasn't just all inside her head..
Vincent tried his best to sound calm, hoping that maybe if he did, she would calm down too..and come back to her senses.
"Of course I heard something. You kept screaming at yourself."
"No, not me!The other voice!Didn't you hear it?"
Vincent immediately stopped shaking her and stepped back like she was something contagious.
" Tifa, there wasn't any other voice. Just you, shouting yourself hoarse."
------
A/N=Review or I'll mention Selphie again.(now there's a threat if ever I heard one..j/k..but please do review, they are very appreciated.:))
