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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - REVELATION
'It's now or never … Come hold me tight ... Kiss me, my darling … Be mine tonight … Tomorrow will be too late … It's now or never … My love won't wait ... When I first saw you ... With your smile so tender ... My heart was captured ... My soul surrendered … I spent a lifetime ... waiting for the right time … Now that you're here … The time is here at last … It's now or never … Come hold me tight … Kiss me, my darling … Be mine tonight … Tomorrow will be too late … It's now or never … My love won't wait … Just like a willow … We will cry an ocean … If we lost true love and sweet devotion … Your lips excite me … Let your arms invite me … For who knows when we'll meet again this way … (Elvis Presley' 'It's Now Or Never')'
Beach. Costa del Sol. Evening.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" His voice came from behind her, laced with a hurt and coldness he couldn't hide. He sat on the sand next to her, ready to talk if she chose to do so. He still wore his beach clothes from earlier, having gone straight to the bar after storming away.
That's where Jessie had found him, drowning his troubles in a tall glass of amber. After some careful prodding by his sister, he'd admitted to her what had transpired on the beach prior to his storming away in a fit of anger. She'd looked guiltily at him as she confessed to knowing about it, but that her loyalty to Tifa as a friend prevented her from telling him. She hadn't given him any more information than that, telling him instead that he needed to be talking to Tifa and not drowning his emotions in the bottle. She'd taken the glass and handed it back to the bartender, announcing that he'd had enough and shoved him out of the bar and back towards the beach.
His sudden reappearance was an interruption to her thoughts as she stared out over the moonlit water. She hadn't expected to hear from him so soon. She hadn't moved from the beach since he'd stormed away hours before after she'd told him the painful truth she'd kept hidden from him.
"I tried." She spoke softly, sadly, her voice nearly getting lost on the wind. "I called your office. I even went to the Shinra building, but I couldn't get past the front desk. The guard dog receptionists wouldn't even take a written message for you."
His expression was filled with sadness as he nodded in understanding, remembering the army of receptionists employed by Shinra throughout the entire building. It didn't matter if they were cute, giggly young girls or serious old matrons; they all had the same order drilled into in their heads. No one got messages to the Turks unless the Turks had specifically authorized it.
Adding even more fuel to the fire was the fact he had been a hot commodity throughout the old Shinra Headquarters. Any female he smiled at or talked to had been instantly perceived as a threat to their own chances of a night with him. He could only imagine the thoughts running through the minds of the vindictive bitches when Tifa showed up at the front desk. She hadn't lost any of her beauty in the last five years, and it hadn't been a secret that a serious relationship had just ended. Although her name wasn't known, there wasn't a woman in that building that hadn't wanted to try to fill the void left by Tifa Lockheart. At that moment, he hated every single one of them.
His hand moved to touch the silken strands of her hair, recapturing them from the breeze that claimed them as their own. She didn't protest his touch, and from the way she stared out over the waves, he wasn't sure that her mind had even registered his touch on her hair.
"What happened to her?" His voice was choked, his heart hurting from all the 'what could have beens' that had been filling his mind all afternoon. He'd always ragged on Rude for allowing himself to be tied down by the old ball and chain routine, but all afternoon, he'd been wishing that he'd done the same.
"A life of poverty in the slums wasn't what I wanted for our daughter. I didn't want her to have to grow up like you did or live like I did." A tear slipped from her eye as she spoke, drawing her knees closer to her chest and wrapping her arms tightly around them. She gazed over the sea, her eyes unfocused as she watched the waves break against themselves. She continued. "I gave her up for adoption to a well-off family on the Plate."
He released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding as he had expected her to say that Wallace's daughter was really theirs. Tifa and the little girl had an amazing rapport, and it would be like the former Avalanche member to leave her child in the care of someone she could trust. He was almost surprised when she told him that she'd allowed their child to be adopted.
"Do you know who they are?" Reno asked, knowing that most adoptions in Midgar were highly private and adoptive parents often weren't told of the birthplaces of the children they were adopting. Despite all the social ills in Midgar under Shinra's regime, the social workers had done many of the children born in the slums a favor by adhering to this policy. They were the lucky ones. They got out.
Tifa shook her head. "All I know is that they worked for Shinra." She laughed hollowly as she turned her head to look at him. "Ironic, isn't it?"
He nodded, wondering if his daughter's adoptive parents ever wondered about their child's true parentage. "Did you see her before you gave her up?" He asked, looking for any shred of information about the child he had fathered, but never known about until today.
Tifa nodded. "They let me hold her a few times, and I snuck down to the nursery to watch her." She admitted, remembering how alone she had felt. She remembered wistfully wishing that he was there to share in the joy- that they'd been a family, and that it wasn't just her, giving up her child to strangers in hopes of saving their innocent daughter from the hard life of Midgar's slums.
He heard the hurt in her voice as she spoke. His fingers brushed softly against her cheek. "What did she look like?"
He needed the information like a drug. He'd always used alcohol to wash away the pain, but all it ever did was make him comfortably numb. He couldn't use that anymore. He'd tried this afternoon, but his sister had saved him from the trip down that lonely road. Instead he sat on a beach in the town where it had all conceivably started as a truth hidden from him was revealed.
"Beautiful. She didn't have any hair, but she had the most beautiful eyes." Tifa paused, a frown crossing her face as tears fell in remembrance of the few times she'd gotten to hold their daughter. "Your eyes."
"Guess that means you weren't sleeping with Rude." The usual Reno-esque comment slipped so naturally from his lips that he didn't even realize he'd said it until she laughed.
"No, not Rude." She responded, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. He thought that he'd never loved her so much. She'd forgiven the out of place comment that had slipped out, and if what she'd said earlier was true, she'd forgiven him as well.
He caught her off guard as he pulled her close, wrapping his arms protectively around her and drawing her close to him. 'Nothing will ever hurt you again. Not the vindictive receptionists. Not Strife. And especially not me.'
"Do you think we'll find her?" Tifa asked him, her voice muffled against his chest, but interrupting his thoughts all the same. She was afraid to speak the thought that had run through her mind since Meteor. She hoped with all of her heart that their daughter had survived.
She knew that they had no right to barge into their daughter's life, but with the shambles of Midgar and the amount of people that had died during the Meteor attack, she felt justified in knowing if the child she had carried and given birth to had survived.
He felt the dampness of her tears against his chest as he smoothed her hair with his hand. "She's the kid of a Turk." He reassured her, not speaking the same thoughts that he suspected were already running through her mind. "Even if she wasn't," He paused to brush his lips against the top of her head, sending shivers down her spine as he did so. "You've got the Turks on your side. We'll find her."
He had a good idea of what shambles the Shinra records were probably in, but he also knew what Elena was capable of. The blackmail trick with Tseng aside, Elena had gained Turk status by her easy ability to dig up information. If the trail was still there, Elena could find it. Hope welled in his heart, but he didn't dare tell the broken woman sobbing against him. He didn't want to dash her hopes if the Shinra records turned out to be useless.
He felt her smile against his chest as he held her. She was no longer the enemy; no longer the one that blamed him for the deaths of thousands. She understood that she was as much to blame as he. As she cried for the daughter she'd given up, wanting nothing more than to give the child a chance, Tifa Lockheart was once again the vulnerable girl from Nibelheim he'd fallen in love with five years before.
'Love.' He had sworn five years ago to shut that emotion completely out of his life, especially where she was concerned. But, as it barreled into his mind with the force of the eleven o'clock train to Sector Seven, he knew. He knew deep in his heart that he loved her. Since she had left, he had sought absolution in the bottom of a glass and in countless, meaningless other women. None of them had ever come remotely close to providing him with the feelings he felt when he was with her. No one else had ever managed to incite in him the intense emotion, be it anger or absolution, that she could. None of his vices had ever been able to make him forget. As he held her in his arms as she cried, he finally knew the truth. She had been the one then. She was the one now. And she would be the one forever.
"I love you." He whispered to her, the words slipping from his lips without him being conscious that he had actually spoken them. He went cold with fear as he realized he'd spoken them, his soul bare before her.
She looked up at him, her eyes still glistening with the tears. Though his suddenly spoken words shocked her, she knew he meant them. Those were words Nathan Reno didn't use often. She smiled softly, knowing there was no way she could deny either him or herself this. Shinra was dead. Avalanche was dispersed, the members focused, for the most part, on their own lives. Midgar was rebuilding. The past was irrelevant now. No more charades. All that mattered was her. Him. Them.
He waited for what seemed like an eternity before she raised her head. Her lips met his in a tender kiss before she replied. "I love you, Nathan."
Rude and Jessie were going to have a field day, but neither of them minded in the least.