Chapter Four; the Visitor

Cloud looked good. He looked even better than she had remembered him. He was tall and lean and handsome. His hair was still spikey and blond, but seemed to have been cut since she had seen him last. His eyes were blue and lovely, and he was beaming at her. She realized she used to barely ever see him smile, and to see him like this was something new.. but reassuring.

"Hey there, Ma'am," he said cheerfully to her, one hand behind his back. Grinning, she walked from behind the desk and went up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck tightly and pressed a kiss on his cheek (she had to reach up on tiptoes), and then she said, "It's so good to see you again."

He returned her hug with one hand on her lower back, and when they stepped away from each other, he produced a gargantuan bouquet of pink flowers from behind his own back. "No way!" she exclaimed happily, "How sweet of you!"

He shrugged. "I dunno, I thought you might like them," he said, grinning. They both felt shy, and didn't know what to say for a moment, so she nodded and took the flowers from him and asked him if he wanted coffee. When he said yes, please, she brought him to the back, where she let him settle down in her living room while she cut the flowers to fit a vase, and made coffee for the both of them.

"I baked cake," she told him as she set their coffee down on her low wooden table.

"Nice! What kind?"

She motioned to the kitchen rather helplessly. "What's it called. Ah, chocolate. Fudge. Yes."
He nodded to her, and if he saw her blush he didn't say. He stood up, bent over to fetch the coffee she had just put down for him, and followed her into the kitchen. In the kitchen she laughed and couldn't meet his eyes, conscious of his height again, not to mention his broad shoulders. She wasn't used to being around him any more, after only a year.

"You were lucky to get your hands on this place," he commented as he looked around.

"Yeah.. it's great here. A central position in Kalm, so you can tell what's going on in the city, and I'm making enough money to still be supporting a couple of other small projects in the area." she said as she busied herself with chopping the ends off the flowers he had brought along.

He nodded pensively, and she could feel him watching her as she stretched to reach a glass vase on the top shelf of the cabinet. He reached easily up and retrieved it for her.

"Thanks, but I could have gotten that," she said, pretending to be miffed, and he was amused.

"Somehow it's a reassurance to know you're still as short as when I last saw you," he remarked. There was a dead silence and the sudden stillness of air between them, as the parting terms of a year ago flashed through each head.

-as when I last saw you-

At the same time that Tifa asked, "Would you like whipped cream with your chocolate cake",
Cloud said, "I tried to find you in Midgar, you know. I spent most of last year looking for you."

She felt earth sink away beneath her, and she felt her heart beating rapidly. She left the whipped cream for what it was.
"..I didn't know. But I knew. I mean.. I wanted to go there at first, but then I was drawn to Kalm.. I didn't know how I would be able to leave you a message, so I just trusted I'd be able to find you again one day. I mean, phone lines couldn't stay down forever, right?" she argued, cutting into the chocolate cake. She stopped when she realized the pieces were growing savagely smaller with each slice.

He was looking at her but she couldn't look back. She didn't tell him the entire truth. She didn't say that her choice had been largely based off of him -where Cloud was going, she wouldn't.
Somehow, standing before him like this, that choice seemed childish and silly, and she regretted it. But she had stepped away for a reason, hadn't she?
Not now.

"I'm sorry," she said again, fiddling with the flowers. This time she managed to glance up at him.

He nodded. "I understand. I was just worried. I didn't know anything about your situation. Maybe something had happened to you, a building collapsed, a gang that got bored.. "

"Cloud," she smiled, "I'm a martial artist. I survived ShinRa, Jenova and Sephiroth, just like a certain someone.."

"You're right. It's stupid. I dunno. I'm just glad you've been doing well. This well."

"Yeah? Well I'm just glad I get to see you again." she said warmly, and gave the flowers a last fluff, before taking them and her plate of chocolate cake and moving ahead of him back to the living room.

*

He had been so happy to speak to her again. Of all the members of Avalanche, he had missed her the most. After the defeat of Sephiroth and Meteor, it had seemed almost self-explanatory that he would stay with her, that she would stay with him. He had been so surprised when..

Anyways, what was important was that he was here now, in her 'inn-slash-restaurant-slash-shop thing' as she had eloquently described the complex herself. Here where she was.

The chocolate cake was delicious, of course, and the conversation grew to flow like water. Tifa was very up-to-date on everything that had been going on. And she was Tifa, quick and bright as cleaning detergent- not to mention not nearly as toxic. It was good to be able to talk about a certain project and have her confirm his thoughts, or offer a new opinion. It was good to hear of her feelings and experiences and be able to compare them to his own. It was so good to experience her again.

Tifa's legs were folded beneath her as she lounged on the couch. Cloud was sitting across from her in the great fluffy lazy chair. In between them, on the coffee table, stood two more cups of coffee.
"I think it's brilliant. And she deserves it. She's been waiting for that man for so long." Tifa said.

"Has she really?" he asked, surprised. "I thought she was fine with the platonic nature of their relationship."

"Are you kidding? Do you think if Cid had only been 'a friend,'"-Tifa hooked her fingers into indignant little air quotations and he had to keep from laughing and getting distracted from the point she was trying to make- "to Shera, she would have stood by him so faithfully and taken so much bull from him? As I gathered from her story, she taught him a well-deserved lesson."

"Poor Cid." Cloud remarked, something itching in the back of his mind. He let it rest for now, whatever it was.

"No, it's his own fault for being so mean to her before."

"I seriously hadn't ever considered she might be in love with him.."

"No.. but then, you're always oblivious to those kinds of things, aren't you, Cloud?" she taunted. After she had said it, she made a funny sound in her throat and smiled sort of peculiarly at him.

"Am I always oblivious? I'd like an example, please." he asked, bemused, wondering what she was thinking of.

"Okay.. um, didn't you ever notice that.. ah, that Yuffie.. had a thing for you?"
She was holding back laughter, red creeping over her face.

He gave her a blank look. She had dropped the more serious side of the conversation.
"No.. can't say that I did," he replied dryly. "But then.. apparently, I am oblivious."

She grinned. "You are."

"So sixteen-year-old kleptomaniac Yuffie Kisaragi had a 'thing' for me?"

"Yuh-huh. Absolutely."

"Tifa, you are an evil, lying cow."

"Cow? If I'm a cow then you're a skinny, poisonous, slimy, green treefrog. I actually think she liked Vincent." And her eyes danced as she sipped her coffee innocently.

"Vincent and Yuffie?" his eyebrows went up. "Isn't that a bit more of an age difference?"

"Oh.. I don't know, everyone has different preferences."

"Beside the fact that he could be her grandfather."

"He still looks quite good for a fifty-or sixty-something-year-old, if you ask me."

Cloud gave her a look, muttered something about how Vincent could very well be Tifa's grandfather, then took the last bite of his chocolate cake.

"Well? How was the cake?" she asked, ignoring his mutterings.

"Tasty." he answered after finishing his mouthful. "But since you're a maitre d' when it comes to anything edible, you must have known that already, so you were just fishing for compliments, weren't you?" he teased.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're mean! That's it. No more cake for you."

He couldn't help it, he started laughing. She was bringing out his best side, really. Or at least some side. She stood up and curtseyed, grinning at him.

She took their plates to the kitchen, and he looked lazily around the living room. He felt light, open, released. This past year had changed him a lot, he knew it. He smiled more and laughed more than he used to, because he had learned that people drew strength from him, and smiling had become a way he could give people strength. Tifa certainly didn't mind smiling.

She returned, a thoughtful look on her face.
"Cloud?"

"Yeah?"

"How.. how long will you still be working on this project? Helping out with building houses in the North Ring?"

He shrugged. "Another week, I think. I'm basically there on the committee because I'm a financial benefactor. They're just finishing off on details and then I'll be a free man again, I think."

She regarded him as she pulled her brown hair back into a sloppy ponytail. He noticed she had cut off quite a bit of it.

"What's your next one coming up?" she asked.

"Nothing yet. Why?" he asked back.

"Well, if you have nothing better to do, you.." she shook her head and rolled her eyes at herself. "Just so you know. You're always welcome here."

He smiled at her. "Thank you. I'll hold you to that, Tifa Lockheart."

"Good."

They stayed in the living room, talking until seven, when Tifa jumped up and exclaimed they really should do something about dinner. She scoffed at his suggestion to go out somewhere.

"You used to trust my cooking, Strife."

He sniggered. "Yeah. Before I tasted it."
He laughed and feigned pain when she punched him.

*

A/N; it took a long time to get this chapter where it is now. It also took a really long time for my hair to dry today =B
Go on, all of you, go and fall in love. You'll eat less chocolate cake that way. I just need to find the right boy.

Have any of you seen the movie Ichi the Killer? I like the blonde one with the piercings.. *sniggers*