Chapter 3

TWO HEARTS

Darkness. It came from nowhere. It swallows me. I can't see anything. I only feel…a horror…It emerges at every corner I can not see. It haunts me…Hell…what's going on ? There is something very very wrong here…The air is heavy…hard to breathe…My body…it grows weaker…My head…it is aching…pain…it is getting more…and more…I can't stand…I have to fight it…have to….

Cloud puts his concentration. He tries to remove his headache, but this is unusual one.

What happened to me ? This just comes suddenly….and this pain is striking me as hell….Cloud thinks to himself.

Come...come to me…

That voice….Cloud startles. Shocked. Surprised. A familiar voice, a long and forgotten one, but he can not forget it. Suddenly he feels pain in his head grows, he screams….

"Arrrrgggghhhh !!! Go away !!! Go !!! You hurt me !!!", Cloud screams while holding his head. His sweat is rolling down on his forehead. He can not stand it anymore. He falls to his knees, still holding his head. His body moves wildly as if he could remove his pain. He feels his consciousness is getting away with every breathe he takes. He screams wildly.

Come…come…obey your master…

"Nooo…", Cloud whispers in his pain. His body strains. Muscles on his body contracts. His sweat drops more and more.

I have to stand…I have to fight this pain…come on…my body…be strong..be tough…he injects a fighting spirit to his mind, reflected to his body.

You will have no chance against me,.….

"No way !!", Cloud shouts angrily. He slowly stands up from his kneeling position. His breath is short and uncontrollable. It must take a great strength to hold on standing position with his condition. He still feels pain, but his consciousness is slowly brought back to him again. Under his pain, he reaches his sword on his back, pulls it from its sheath. He draws his sword in fighting stance, ready to face whatever may comes to him.

"Fool !!", suddenly a voice echoes from his dark surrounding. Cloud feels a horror when hearing that voice. He knows that voice very well. It is a voice he should not hear, but with that, he is sure now who is he facing right now. That can not be other than….

"SEPHIROTH !!!!", Cloud yells. Anger is shown in his eyes, as well as his fear. He becomes uneasy. Obviously, his position, engulfed by darkness, is not a good position to take a fight, even to notice anything. The best position for such situation is defending stance. He knows it, yet he just stands still on his position, holding his sword tighter.

He waits for the worst to come. For him, time crawls slowly, stressing his body, his muscles, and his mind too. That is the game of mind.

How long I can stand the pressure ? Sure it kills me every time….I must be aware for anything...I must not be careless…Cloud tries to calm himself down.

"Hmmm…mwahahahahhhaaa…", a sinister laugh echoes. The laugh sounds devilish one. Cloud feels creepy. He knows it, he knows. He must fight his creepy feeling if he wants to stand against everything. Gradually, that laugh comes to an end, still in devilish way.

"You will die !!!", that sound echoes again from nowhere.

Suddenly, a small light appears above Cloud. Driven by his instinct, Cloud glances at the light source quickly. There is a sparkling small light falls from above, directly to him. That light goes bigger and bigger as it falls down every feet, and beneath that light is a figure. Cloud narrows his eyes to see clearly. There, a man figure falls to him from above with silver long hair grins evilly to him. His black cape flies like flag. That man holds a long masamune sword, pointed to Cloud who is standing below.

Sephiroth. In his previous familiar form.

Cloud locks his jaw and counts his distance with Sephiroth. He lays down his sword, ready to swing a deadly upper slash to Sephiroth when the time comes at a right moment. He knows what to do. He is well trained on counter attack timing. Sephiroth still points his sword toward Cloud on his fall. Suddenly, he leaps his way down in a time, goes faster to Cloud. His sudden move makes Cloud surprised. Cloud is very surprised that Sephiroth can perform that move to increase his falling speed. He never thinks about that. It means his timing to give counter attack to Sephiroth is totally screwed up, and it means bad thing to Cloud. Tense is up. Panic, Cloud swings his sword quickly, forming an upper slash. He only hopes that his action can block Sephiroth's sword that pointed toward him thus he will have a chance to evade. Unfortunately, his sword only slashes empty space. Cloud's timing was missed. Now, he must recover his action quickly to perform blocking move. Before he fully recovers himself from previous move, Sephiroth now is only a few feet above him, grinning to him. Cloud stares to him in horror. His heart beats faster.

I must be quick ! Cloud thinks to himself. He is rather panic now. Still, he tries his best to block Sephiroth.

It is too late.

"DIE !!!", Sephiroth yells. He stabs his masamune quickly to Cloud, directly to his unguarded chest. When it happened, Cloud's sword is on the way to block Sephiroth's, but since his sword is heavier, he can not match Sephiroth's speed. Sephiroth's sword goes right into Cloud's body. Cloud's eyes widened. His mouth is opened and spitting his inaudible word.  Sephiroth's sword tip thrusts Cloud to his back. This forces Cloud to step back in pain. Sephiroth then spins his sword while laughing madly. Cloud feels pain, his body is shivering. His hands are trembling. He can not believe what happened. He loses, Sephiroth wins, and it takes his life as prize.

"Noooo !!!!!!", Cloud screams with his remaining power. Suddenly he only sees darkness around his eyes.

……………

"Cloud…Cloud…wake up, Cloud !!"

Cloud slowly gains his conscious, and slowly opens his eyes. The first thing he sees is a blurred image of a young woman. Even though his sight is blurred, he still can see that the woman has a nicely shaped face. Cloud yawns slowly. He rubs his eyes to get clearer sight. There, he sees a familiar face, a woman's face. Her ruby eyes stare at him with worried look. She caresses his cheek with tender touch. The way she cares about Cloud points out to who she is.

"Tifa…?", Cloud's voice finally comes up. He can not believe what he sees. He was supposed to be dead.

"Thanks God, you finally wake up..", Tifa says to him. Cloud jumps suddenly and his action startles Tifa. "Cloud, what's up..?", Tifa asks with worried tone.

Cloud is just quiet. He looks his surrounding confusedly, then looks down to his chest. He then throws his eyes to Tifa who is still looking at him.

"You were fallen asleep last night…", Tifa starts to explain.

"Me ?", Cloud's eyes are widened. His expression tells Tifa that he is really confused. Tifa giggles seeing Cloud like that.

"Yes, you are, Mr. Always-Makes-Us-Worry…", she laughs softly,"…right here, in the church".

Cloud's eyes sweep his surrounding once more. He now knows where he is standing. Midgar church in slums area. He recalls that he was fallen asleep last night at church's bench. At that time, he also recalls that he was fighting with Sephiroth. Quickly, he looks again into his chest and finds nothing out of ordinary.

"Pheww…that was just a dream…", Cloud mumbles to himself. He is glad to know that his fight with Sephiroth was nothing more than a dream. It didn't matter if he won, but he was losing, and it frightens him a bit.

"Cloud ? What's the matter ?", Tifa's voice gains his attention. Cloud looks at Tifa.

"Umm…it's nothing….I just had a dream…nothing to worry about…", Cloud tries to calm Tifa down. "Well, tell me what happened Tifa ?", Cloud questions Tifa.

"You didn't come back from your training. I and the others were waiting for you for dinner. We thought you took a little walk before went home, so we didn't worry about you. But when the night went late and you had not come yet, we were worried, especially me, Cloud. We started to look for you everywhere, but we didn't find you…."

Tifa takes a breath for a moment, then continues,

"I was getting more worried. I thought something bad had happened to you, and couldn't stop thinking about that. I was afraid that you were taken by monsters, but the others told me it could not be happened. I tried to think like they told, but still could not think clearly. We still did search for you. Even Cid was going to use Highwind to search for you from above, until Barrett snapped out an idea to look for you in this church. So we did. Actually, I had faint hope to find you there, but at last we found you were lying down on that bench, sleeping…"

Tifa looks at Cloud's face. His face turns slightly to red.

He must be embarrassed, Tifa thinks. She then continues,

"After having found you, Barrett was going to drag you home…", Tifa chuckles,"…and Cid was going to slap you on your ass, he said so…", her chuckles goes louder.

"Aww…Tifa…come on…continue your story…", Cloud blushes.

"Oh, okay, Cloud. Of course I held them to do nasty things to you,", a smirk goes on her face,"…and then I told them to go home leaving you and me. So I accompanied you that night….err…actually, I was sleeping, too, next to you. I was sleeping when I heard you mumbled something but you were still sleeping. Your body shook sometimes, and you were sweating. I hugged you until your shook was over. I thought you were having a bad dream. After that, I could not sleep until this morning…", Tifa ends her words, but then she continues while smiling, "…and then here you are, awaken again…you naughty boy, always makes us worry and you forgot to brush your teeth before sleeping, aren't you ?", she laughs softly again.

Cloud blushes. He feels guilty to make the others worried about him, especially Tifa. After all, Tifa is still nice to him, and she cares a lot about him. Her story touches Cloud's heart. Tifa was accompanying him last night, just to make sure he is alright. Now, Tifa acts like there is nothing wrong. Actually, she is trying to ease Cloud's heart so he is not burdened.

"Tifa…", Cloud calls Tifa gently.

"Yes, Cloud ?", she replies with playful tone.

"Thank you Tifa, for your caring and kindness…", Cloud says groggily. He feels that he will feel better if Tifa was acting like the others, mad about him for not coming home, but in fact, Tifa is still warm and caring to him. Her different treatment to him makes Cloud feels guilty to her, but strangely, in other side, he feels he is lightheaded with Tifa's presence.

"Umm..Cloud…I want to say this : you might have a bad dream, but here you are, safe with me…", Tifa whispers, and with that, she leans forward to Cloud's face and kisses him on cheek. Cloud is surprised to accept Tifa's kiss, but he does not bother it.

"Thank you, Tifa…."., Cloud says after Tifa breaks her kiss. They look at each other with caring look.

"Aww….your breath smells like a dragon !", Tifa breaks the moment, shouts to him cheerfully. Cloud's eyes are widened.

"ME ? Like dragon ??", he laughs. He puts his hand in front of his opened mouth, and blows air from his mouth. He then smells his hand. Tifa watches him curiously while smiling.

"Yuck ! You are right ! Smells like hell, well, I am sure this will be vanished with a total bath !", Cloud claims. They two laugh together. After some moments, they run out of breath.

"Cloud, let's go home. It's morning already.", Tifa asks Cloud.

"Okay..", Cloud then holds Tifa's hand and pulls her up from bench. Tifa gasps. After she stands, Cloud stares at her eyes. He smiles.

He's smiling at me…how handsome he is…Tifa thinks.

Cloud's hand caress Tifa's left cheek. He says nothing, just smiles to her. Tifa's face turns slightly into red.

She's beautiful, how blind I was so far…Cloud thinks.

Cloud removes some strands of hair that falls on her face and says,

"Let's go home…"

Tifa nods her head, gives him a peek kiss on cheek. Together, they walk hand in hand toward outside of the church.

On their walk to home, Cloud and Tifa just keep silent. Sometimes, they squeeze each other's hand and it is enough for them. Suddenly, Tifa says something,

"Cloud…"

"Yes ?"

"You remembered 'her' ? Aren't you ?"

Cloud keeps on silent. He doesn't know what to say.

"You do remember 'her'….that's why you came to the church that night and spent a night there…", Tifa's voice trails off. Cloud notices a sad tone in her voices. He sighs. He really does not know what answer can relieve Tifa.

Tifa is right, I can not forget 'her', but I have decided to move on. I have Tifa now, what should I tell to Tifa ? I just can't let Tifa down. She is very nice to me….

"Cloud..", Tifa calls him again. She stops her steps. Cloud stops his too. Now her face turns to him. Cloud now sees a sad look in her eyes, accompanying her sad tone before. Tifa gazes at Cloud's eyes carefully. She swears to herself that she cannot understand what his eyes tell very well. His look is very deep, and there is sadness and sorrow beneath, as well as hope. Even so, she feels that she sees a hope for her inside his eyes. That makes her relieved a little. Tifa knows that she loves him very much, and he has special affection to her as response, but she doesn't know what he really feels toward her. All she knows, she always wants to be by his side, cheers him up, makes him happy.

"Umm..nothing…let's walk again", Tifa then walks again. Cloud follows her. They are still walking hand in hand. Now is Cloud's turn to stare at Tifa's face while walking. He also does not know what she feels inside. She is his childhood friend, and he adored her so much. He joined SOLDIER to impress her, to be by her side, to be her hero. He recalls their promise under the Nibelheim sky when they were kids. He also recalls every moment they shared together. Through good times. Through bad times. She is always being by his side no matter what. Cloud's heart is touched with that fact. He feels lucky to have someone like Tifa. Now he just wants to be by her side, to protect her, and to give her true happiness. He does not know what kind of feeling that settles his heart about Tifa, but he just wants to keep that feeling. It makes him comfortable and feels alive.

Cloud smiles to Tifa, but Tifa does not notice him. She is playing with her own mind.

……………

"Where are they now ? It's morning already and they haven't shown up yet !", Cait Sith mutters to himself. He is hopping around in cyclic path.

"Suit yerself, pal", a gruff voice replies. It is Barrett's voice.

"At least we left him with Tifa, he will be safe", Red XIII adds.

"Ha ! That #%$^$ spiky-head should thanks to Barrett since it was Barrett that gave an idea to look for him in that church", again, another voice comes in. From his curse, it is obvious that the voice comes from Cid.

"That church…", Red XIII gives a sigh," I feel sorry about Tifa…Poor Tifa…".

The others are now looking at Red XIII with questioning look.

"What's the matter, buddy ?", Cid inquiries Red XIII. He scratches his own head.

"Ya don't know, Cid ?", Barrett replies with questioning, he drinks his coffee. After he finishes his coffee, he continues," Dat church was one place Aeris belonged to…". Barrett's voice trails off on finishing his words.

Cid takes a deep inhale his cigar. "I see…After these months that kid is still obsessed…", his head hangs up. He feels sorry now for Tifa, and Cloud too.

"But I often saw Cloud and Tifa together these months ago ! They seemed to take care of each other ! ", a voice of teenage girl rushes in the conversation.

"Give him, ..them..I mean, a time, Yuffie", Red XIII responses to Yuffie. "Give Cloud time to let Aeris go, and give Tifa time to fix his broken heart. I am sure they are getting their way together.."

…………….

"There we are, home, at last", Tifa points her finger to building in front of them. It is a middle-sized building which The Avalanche called it home. It is Neo 7th Heaven. This building is used to be 7th Heaven bar before destruction of Sector 7. After its destruction, The Avalanche had no time to think over the bar. It was only a few months ago, after Meteor destruction, when they decided to rebuild the bar in Midgar. Thanks to local governance, Midgar rebuilding process took faster than everyone thought. Also, Midgar people that had ran for their lives when Meteor came started to came back to Midgar again. They thought that this city was their home.

Cloud and Tifa walk toward inside building. There aren't any customers yet since it is morning now, instead there are Barrett, Cid, Cait Sith, Yuffie, Red XIII, and Vincent. Barrett and Cid are sitting on their chairs, facing each other. Cait Sith is just standing near them. Red XIII is sitting quietly near bar table. Yuffie is sweeping the floor, and Vincent is standing at corner solemnly. They give their attention to a couple that has just come in. Cloud, as he walks toward the others, just smiles to them. Silence rises for a moment. All eyes on Cloud.

"Hey, where have you been, kid !?", Cid starts to speak.

"Cid's right man ! We thought ya were gone, being eaten by monster !!", Barrett adds Cid's words with his accent.

"Where is your &^%@# manner ? You just made us worry about your spiky-@$$ !!!", Cid curses again. Cloud just smirks. He shrugs his shoulder.

"He's right, Cloud. We worried about you last night", Cait Sith now gets his turn to speak. " You said you were going for training and would be back before dinner, but you didn't come. After midnight, we had to look for you everywhere ! Fortunately, we found you in that church !! Ugh…you were making us tired, Cloud…", Cait Sith grumbles.

Yuffie stops her job. She then says," Cloud, we did worry about your missing last night, but…do you know about someone who worried about you at most ?", she then makes gesture with her hand to show that the person she is talking about is standing next to him.

"Yo man ! If it wasn't because of Tifa, I would have dragged ya from yer slumber !!", Barrett's gruff voice comes up again.

"And I was gonna slap your f@(kin* a$$ !!", Cid follows Barrett. They both then grumble.

Cloud only takes a deep breath. He has guessed that the others will act like this. He rolls his eyes up and down. With his eye tip, he takes a peek at Tifa. She is closing her grin with her hands. Cloud sighs. He then takes a look at Vincent and waits any words from him, if he ever needs to blame him. Vincent only shakes his head slowly. He is not interested in cursing or blaming Cloud after what he has done last night.

"You were in the church last night…", Vincent suddenly speaks. Cloud just nods. He wonders why Vincent says like that.

"You were in 'her' church..", Vincent adds his words slowly, still in cold tone. This time, Red XIII gives Cloud a meaningful look.

"Next time, please don't make us worry", Red XIII finally says to Cloud in calm tone. He completely understands why Cloud did it.

Cloud gives a sigh again. He is getting tired of these all. He wants to take a shower and breakfast as soon as possible.

"Okay, everybody…", Cloud's voice is out at last. He raises his hands like a villain surrenders to the law. "I was wrong, and I do apologize to all of you…"

"You must promise not to leave your #$@^$% unnoticed again !! Auntie Tifa will surely get mad if you just leave your f$##@^ spot quietly !",  Cid cuts off Cloud's words.

"Well…alright…I promise…", Cloud replies. He laughs softly. He thinks he is really like in court with his friends act as judge. Tifa blushes slightly. She punches Cloud's arm gently.

"Gotcha, Cloud…", she giggles. Cloud only shrugs his shoulder with funny grin sticks on his face.

"Ya better mean it, man ! Let's forget dis matter.", Barrett says as he stands up from his seat. He walks into kitchen door. He gets a chef's hat from table and puts it on his head.

"And now", he says," let's have breakfast together ! I mean, let's have MY breakfast together !!"

AUTHOR'S POST-CHAPTER NOTE :

As I promised before, this chapter is crowded ^-^, but not too crowded. I want to change my writing seamlessly in every chapter, and that is not an easy one…*sigh*…Well, I'm just amateur, don't forget that while writing your review J