Hope. It was such a fragile, futile thing, such a cruel thing to give to someone. It was the worst kind of drug, the kind smuggled in a caress, or a kind smile. It left its mark on you, and left you intoxicated for a lifetime before the high wore off and reality came into play. Such a terribly cruel thing hope was, indeed.
Cloud Strife was not someone to take things such as love lightly.
"Cloud." Tifa spoke to him without looking up. They were sitting half beside each other, half across from each other. "I need to know. Please tell me.."
She took in a long shaky breath. In this lightless place, she wondered if she was even breathing in air, not just a memory of once having to breathe to sustain living cells in their endless cycle of creation and destruction. Perhaps they were all just memories, now.
She knew he was regarding her intently. It was why she couldn't look up. Those eyes.. she couldn't build walls against them, she had tried and failed miserably; they had burned themselves into her memory and now she was nothing short of helpless when confronted with them. He haunted her even as he sat beside her and waited for her to ask her question.
"Why won't you come back to the others with me?"
He looked at her, too tired to keep any emotional masks up. If she hadn't already been in love with him, she would have fallen in love with him right there, just because of the look of sheer surrender on his face. He stood up, and began to walk away, and she followed him without a second thought.
"There is too much I've misdone with this life.. I'm only twenty-one and there's already more blood on my hands than there will ever be on yours. I don't deserve to live."
"What if you came back.. if only to win the Planet's safety from Sephiroth?" She knew her attempt was futile as soon as she uttered the words.
He laughed humorlessly. "Can I be of any use in that battle? Do you think I'll be able to raise even a finger against him?" He shook his head, meeting her eyes, a sense of fatalism coming over him.
"I was cloned after him, created in his image.."
"Cloud, no," she blurted, "you said it yourself, that you were taken by ShinRa after the fire and you were kept for all those years, and they experimented on you.." Her shoulders sagged a little. "You can't be a clone.."
You sound as if you're trying to convince only yourself, Cloud thought as he watched her, struggling. "I don't know, anymore.." he said truthfully, face slowly turning to stone. She recognized his barriers, how easily he put them up and she hated them.
"I thought it all happened to me, to.. to the real Cloud Strife, but now I don't know. Everything else about me has been proven wrong. Why would this be different? Just watched the truth come clear now -I'm just a clone, and a failed one at that."
"No, no! It's not true!" Her outcry jarred some reality in him, a new smoldering unrest. "You're a human being.." she whispered.
"Am I? Wouldn't the real Cloud Strife be able to resist mind possession by some supposedly dead insane general? Would the real Cloud Strife have glowing eyes, and be as strong as I am? The real Cloud Strife wouldn't have given the Black Materia to Sephiroth twice, wouldn't have let everyone important to him get hurt and killed, wouldn't have been such a goddamned bastard all around! If I am human, why am I so bad at living!?" he snarled, and spun away from her, if just to avoid the look in her eyes.
"That's it then, that's why you refuse to go back." she murmured. The way she said it was restful and it disturbed him more than if she would have shouted at him. As if she had given up on him.
Didn't you want to be given up on? Isn't that exactly what you had expected from everyone?
he asked himself angrily. But he knew the answer. Not by her. He had never wanted to be given up on by her. What an idiot he was. Now she knew the truth, and she hated him, that was only natural. But it still hurt him more than ever.
"I guess what we have to do next is.."
What, Tifa? Scream at me, tell me how terrible a non-human I am?
"Figure out how to get some self-confidence back into your poor mind, get your shit together, go back to the rest of them, kick Sephiroth's ass, save the Planet, get married, have kids, and live happily ever after."
The expression on his face after her words must have been priceless, because she started to laugh that sweet laugh of hers. Half wanting to ask if maybe she meant them when she said get married and have kids, he ended up not knowing how to react. Especially not when she walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him tightly. A soft kiss pressed to his cheek and he felt himself begin to blush, because it was her, and he had imagined her doing that. The same lips whispered, "I'm not going to let you slip away." And she pulled away, eyes meaningful and on him.
He swallowed, wanted to swallow again, wanted to kiss her, wanted to run away, wanted to propose to her and make love to her and wanted to beg her to stop and to never turn her gaze to him again.
"And what if I do slip away?" asked Cloud hoarsely. That was all he did. He wondered if the real Cloud would have followed up on that proposal thing.
"You are a human being, Cloud Strife is your name. You are twenty-one years old, one year older than me. We grew up together in a village, miles away from where ever we are now. I.. I remember you. Do you remember me?"
Her voice had a warm timbre to it, and he found himself wondering, strangely enough, what her singing voice would be like. Somehow, her voice caused some bell to ring in his mind, something making him want to pay as close attention to her as he possibly could, wanting not to miss anything. Her face had that same effect on him, that he just couldn't keep his eyes off of her unless he tore himself away. He wondered if it had something to do with puberty, then remembered with relief he had been out of puberty a good couple of years now, and then wondered if that actually counted, if he was in truth a five-year-old clone.
"Do I remember you?"
Half of him wanted to stay wallowing in his dark and sorrowful mind, stay away from her and her question. But the other half saw the light this girl was shining, shining for him, for no one else, and he wanted to be warmed by her, the way he felt she had warmed him before. There seemed to still be a glimmer of hope in his soul that he really was Cloud Strife after all. And so he plunged himself into what felt like a bucket of half melted ice and hard liquor, searching through murkiness and blurs for anything that could be called a memory.
A smile appeared on his face. Tifa resisted the urge to kiss him fiercely, and wondered whether this attraction they were feeling, clinging so thickly between them it seemed they had been bombarded with honey, really was mutual, because she wasn't blind, and had noticed Cloud's behavior somewhat, and compared it to her own. She debated whether or not their behavior towards each other had changed because they were stuck down here together, or that perhaps they had just both been rather blind about the whole thing before now.
The smile on his face didn't vanish. "Yes, I remember you."
"Tell me your memories of me, Cloud." She loved this. She had always dreamt of hearing him out about herself (more so dreamt of hearing him out about Aeris and Jessie, but one couldn't be picky). Who knows what would come of this.
"Where should I start?"
A thought struck her. "When you saved me in Nibelheim, after Sephiroth had attacked me, where had you come from? You weren't there before.." But she immediately remembered what he had told at Kalm, that he had been there.. "Oh.." No, no.. the first thing she had started about could prove his soul dispensable, because he seemed to have no idea of what had really happened.
He looked down. "I wasn't? I.. remember being there. I remember how you were the guide to the reactor, I remember that picture being taken of us.." A frown appeared on his face. "Back at the Crater, Sephiroth said I was never there.. Tifa?"
She was shaking her head, not looking up at him. "I'm sorry, Cloud, but.. you weren't there, that picture was taken of Sephiroth, me, and a SOLDIER named Zack. You weren't there, I hadn't seen you at all until you whooshed in and saved my life."
"How could I have remembered all of that without having been -Oh." Cloud's frown had changed to a look of thoughtfulness. "Zack..? I know that name.. he was there too." He suddenly looked at Tifa, blue eyes fearful but purposeful. "I was there, and you're right, I wasn't on that photograph. I was one of the guards that accompanied Zack and Sephiroth, who were the representatives from SOLDIER."
"One of the guards..? You mean you were there, but you were -"
"Wearing a helmet the whole time. Of course you didn't recognize me. I did it on purpose, I didn't want you to know I was there.."
"What? Why not?"
He heard the insulted tone in her voice and shook his head. "I didn't want you to see what a failure I was -I never was able to join SOLDIER, Tifa, I was refused. I was only a guard when we came to Nibelheim, and ashamed to death about it."
"Then that's what you meant when you said you hadn't seen me in five years; I was thinking seven. I -oh, dear.."
His eyebrows raised. "What, oh dear?"
The look on her face was one of embarrassment, and she was readily flushing a deep red color while still managing to look very charming about it.
"Were you the guard who had to keep me outside, while the others went into the reactor?"
He nodded. "Yeah, that was me, but I don't really remember any details about it.."
The look of guilt on her face was bringing him close to laughter.
"I kicked you down the stairs at one point so I could go inside anyway." she confessed in a tiny voice.
He looked at her in disbelief. "You kicked me? I always thought I had fallen.. do you know you almost broke my neck there?" he exclaimed, but his face revealed amusement as he shook his head. "Anyways.."
She pushed herself to focus on the larger revelation instead of the one of kicking the love of her life down the stairs five years ago. What a strange couple they were.
"What happened afterwards?" she asked softly, wondering if he would remember how he had repeated the promise to her as she had lain there, half-dead but feeling strangely alive..
"When I came to after my fall down the stairs.. I went down to the village first, because the reactor seemed deserted.. then I realized you were still there.." He glanced at her and she bit her lip.
"I ran back to the reactor, and inside. I saw your father lying there, dead." He glanced at her again to judge her reaction, and when he knew it to be steady, continued.
"I kept going, and in the room with all the tanks I found you and Zack there, you were both dying. You really scared the shit out of me there, you know that? I was sure I was going to lose you, you were so far gone. I cast all the cure spells I could on you, but it didn't seem to help all that much.. then Zack called me over and told me to get back at Sephiroth for doing all he had. I was more than ready to kill Sephiroth after all he had done, believe me.. I took Zack's sword and ran after him. I ran into Zangan, and sent him to you. He did what he could for Zack but couldn't take him with him, I guess.."
"What happened between you and Sephiroth?" she demanded, feeling adrenaline coursing as if it were happening now and not almost two thousand days ago.
Cloud's eyes narrowed as he tried to clear out his head.
"I confronted him. I faced him in the room just as he was uncovering Jenova.. I don't know if it's because I was so mad I was more focused than ever on my sword and how much damage I could possibly do to him, or if he was just so wrapped up in the discovery of his mother and his origins that his swordplay had become sloppy.. what it came down to was, I actually had come close to defeating him." Cloud cracked a rueful smile and surprised Tifa by suddenly taking his navy sweater off, and the shirt under it. She couldn't help but stare at his bare chest, and consider how, if this had been a cartoon, she would have turned spontaneously into a wolf and started to howl. Luckily, her concentration wasn't easily lost, and she focused herself on what he was doing. He pointed to a specific scar on his abdomen, oblivious to her prior, less than holy thoughts.
"This is where he stuck that goddamned Masamune through me. If it had been half an inch to the left he would have hit two vital organs and I wouldn't have been sitting here, shirtless and well."
"Sephiroth impaled you on his sword..?" she asked softly. She had always known she was someone who could visualize things easily; now she cursed the fact. Tears threatened as she visualized Sephiroth cruelly driving that sword, the sword which she had clutched moments earlier, through Cloud.
He nodded, unaffected by the concept the way she was. "I lived, which was fantastic enough by itself. What was really spectacular, if you ask me, is how that actually worked to my advantage."
He noticed the pallor her face had taken and tried to reassure her by smiling. He didn't want her to look as if she was about to faint. He took her hands before he continued. "Are you alright?"
She nodded curtly, and though he wasn't completely satisfied, he continued. "Sephiroth was very poorly concentrated at that moment, and clinging to his sword. I kind of gasped and tried to pull it out of me, but couldn't because his grip on it was so firm.. I managed to lift the sword and him with it, and we were standing on this flimsy bridge over a great pool of mako, so I tipped him over the edge and he fell in, simple as that.. after which I collapsed miserably on the floor of course."
Her hand was covering her mouth as she stared at him, slowly recovering from the shock. "Hey, it's okay, Tifa, it was five years ago, it's alright."
She took in a deep breath, marveling at how her breathing could be steady. "I can barely believe you're still alive, Cloud."
He shrugged. "Am I?"
"Oh no, please, don't start again, Cloud, isn't it obvious that you're human, that you are a living being!?" she exclaimed, shaken from the hope that this whole ordeal would be over soon, as he could remember all of this.
His eyebrows went up in a 'who knows?' expression. "There isn't anyone to confirm that whole story of mine.. this is how I remember it, but who knows, maybe one of Hojo's assistants fed me that one day, out of sheer boredom. You were there, but, well, half-dead. Zack, Sephiroth, well, dead." He realized he still had her hands in his, but didn't let go. "It is true that it has helped, but it's not what I'm looking for.. Tifa!?"
She leaned forwards, crying into his chest. She wanted to scream at him, lash out at him, kick him, apologize to him, beg him to give her another chance, she wanted to die in his arms right now and let this whole bloody case be done with. She didn't want to cry anymore; how weak he must think her!
He took her face in his hands and carefully kissed away the tears that had cleared their way down smooth cheeks. "Tifa, I'm sorry.. please.. don't give up on me yet.." he pleaded, finding that this alien emotion was stronger than he had expected. He did not want her to leave him behind. He was growing afraid of himself as he felt himself, gently kissing her face. He wanted to, but he didn't deserve to.. she was so far above him, so unreachable, the thought he would be allowed even to long for her was ludicrous.
But it didn't stop him, ludicrous though it was, from trailing his kisses down to her mouth, where their lips met with such tenderness and forebearing it was as if meant to be.