Chapter XII; Drifting
She was drifting.
Everything that had ever mattered to her was forgotten for now. You know how it is?
fast asleep-
and you've been so tired for so long
and life is so bothersome!
don't want to wake up
she certainly didn't want to.
Where there had been a warmth?
It was gone now. Not that she felt cold, now. No, not cold, never cold, ever. Just that, that feeling, that wholeness that she remembered even as the memory faded, that warmth had been so delicious.
She couldn't quite capture what had been the source of the warmth she had just lost. Her brow furrowed and her eyes shot back and forth beneath her eyelids. There was such a glow around her she felt her eyelids were transparent, and she could see through them even as they were closed.
A faint image plucked at her hair, like a shy child waiting to be noticed. She wanted to turn around, but every time she thought she saw it, or had caught it in her field of vision, it had ducked around a corner again, not wanting to be seen.
What was it? Not the caress of a mother, not the cuddle of a young child -not the tease of a sibling, not the embrace of a friend. No, she remembered being encircled by the arms of a lover.
With the dawning of this realization she pulled together spastically, denying it, denying it, denying anything that could endanger her survival.
She remembered how, in past years, past days, perhaps? she would fall asleep at night.
She sat up, reading, back leaned against the iron head of the bed. The light behind her shone tiredly, casting three silhouettes (from three different light bulbs) of the back of her head on the pages of her book. It was an old light, but she was lucky to have it, where she lived now, in the poorer -lower -half of Midgar. She put the book down -she was too tired to still read anyway. She had already reached her only reason to read. She only kept herself awake until her eyes fell shut, because that way, she would drop off to sleep immediately. No lying awake and thinking thoughts she always regretted in the morning. With winter in the slums, she gave her room to Marlene. The room had belonged to Marlene anyways, before she had joined the group. Marlene's old room wasn't well ventilated, it held heat easily, within its crumbling walls. She had insisted Marlene take it back for the winter. Marlene was only six, and she was already almost nineteen. She could handle a poorly heated room. She had not told Barret that in the winter her blood didn't circulate all that healthily, especially throughout her limbs. He didn't know she slept wearing her sweats, gloves, skiing socks and a scarf wrapped around her head, and that she still had to sit on her fingers for an hour in the morning before she could feel them again.
She curled under the covers and ignored the shivers running down her body. She could never fall asleep when her toes and fingers were so cold they ached. She always became gaunt and pale in the winter, haunting the hall, and the kitchen, and the deserted bar all night long to keep her blood flowing. She sat in the window sill sometimes and pretended there were stars.
She remembered the sensation of cold drawing itself up her back, and ticking the downy hair on her arms. It breathed on the back of her neck, and she slowly became colder and colder, even as she remembered it. Her arms wrapped around her own middle as she floated in moist green light.
She remembered how she would walk outside sometimes, just to get that ever-present feeling of restlessness out of her subconscious. It would be pitch-black out, except for the occasional wan light of a street lamp that would accidentally still be working. She would watch her breath curl out of her mouth like unruly cigarette smoke, and a smile would curl out carefully, but also unruly, on her lips. She would practice blowing out ringlets of smoke -well, alright, not smoke, just breath, then -and sometimes even a laugh would shimmer out. She would enjoy herself, late night, early morning on the streets of sector seven. She would forget for a moment that she had no future, just as she had no past, and there was no love in her life, save a little girl and her rough father who had taken her under their wing. She would forget there was a Planet dying the way she felt she had died a long time ago, she would forget that she was in a hopeless city, entombed beneath a forsaken one. She would try not to think of who she was, or who she would never be, and she would be briefly, fleetingly happy.
She remembered hiding herself in her covers and blankets on her creaking, narrow bed. In the winter, she only slept on the nights that she was so tired she couldn't stand anymore.
Now she found herself curled in a fetal position, head almost between her knees, trying to drive out the cold she so pointedly remembered. It was harder to do, now that she had encountered the warmth of those arms, that chest -a heartbeat pressed to her thirsty, eager ear. She had even woven her own heartbeat to match his.
And so, she hated that heartbeat for deserting her. She hated those arms for drawing away from her shoulders and waist. She hated herself for releasing and trusting the way she seemed to so easily, when she never should have. Oh, how she hated who she was. Who she was, or who she had become? Was her future -now present -decided the moment she was born, or was it her own stupid, sickly fault she had turned out such a pathetic girl?
Her eyes fluttered open and then shut again. Breaths wanted to come and go the way they were used to, but didn't; it wasn't necessary.
The cold spread over her like a protective blanket. It was not a sensation anymore. The cold had become an emotion. Or a lack thereof. Or a lifestyle. Or death.
She promised herself preservation. She didn't want to die anymore than anyone else did. She didn't want to suffer anymore than anyone else did. She didn't want to surrender anymore than she might have wanted to a year ago.
She resented herself deeply for surrendering for even a moment to the young man with the warm, reserved smile and the tall, lean frame.
In rivets and droplets and smoky glass stones, the memories of a dream dreamt only recently, came meandering back. They gently demanded her attention and her evaluation. She wanted covers to hide under. Peeking out from under her wished covers, the memory of the dream was just as prominent. She tried to concentrated on the musty, musky smell of the blanket pulled up to her chin, but couldn't.
What a sweet dream that had been. He had loved her. He had held her endlessly, his body fitting perfectly around hers, like the way beautiful actresses and handsome actors fit perfectly together in those sappy, sweet, strangely rewarding but also depressing romantic films, the ones she used to watch only an age ago.
No wonder she felt so bitter now. That dream had been so reassuring, so realistic. She had clung to it so fervently.. now she released it without a second thought. It had betrayed her by coming into existence, she had betrayed herself by letting the dream in, past the concrete walls she built.
She erased the pencil-painted wish, `if only it had been real,' with a sigh. If only it had been real, indeed. If only anything she had ever hoped or dreamed for in her life had come true and stayed real. She had been embarrassed by her own naiveté often enough. The least she could do is keep her barriers up. Help save the world, be a shining heroine, be beautiful, be radiant, be content.
As long as she didn't believe it herself.
She would not yield anymore, she would not cease her vigilance anymore. She would not show her human weakness anymore. She would be who everyone wanted her to be, and who everyone expected her to be.
Just.. just Tifa.
No one less.
Certainly no one more.