The Continuation.. chopped into two seperate halves in this chapter, like a
magician would his lovely assistant, with a saw. Only better.
*
'Fancy that,' Malien said, turning the tin over in her hands, 'this would make a lovely tea box.'
Tifa smiled and kept working. With Malien, everything was tea boxes -if you could put something inside something, well then you could certainly put tea in it. Tifa had never cared to pay attention to the details of Malien's room, but in a way she felt sure that Malien must have a corner or a drawer somewhere, filled with tins and jars and boxes in their turn filled with tea.
They were sorting through a bag of things which Tifa had bought at the local thrift shop. 'Seventeen cents an item, mum,' the fat man with the red nose and the scruffy beard told her, then turned back to his book. It looked old and valuable, with gold lining the pages, the black leather of the book faded but still firm in place.
She was confused for a moment when he called her 'mum', but then she stopped to consider he was saying 'ma'am' in his accent.
Her own crystal-sharp Nibel dialect had long faded, making way for the soft and melancholic sounds of the subterranean-Midgar accent. On top of the Plate they spoke the language properly, gutteral and trickling like sewage water.
She guessed the man who called her 'mum' was from an older time of Kalm, then; from before that the refugees from Midgar had flooded the town. Now Kalm had become a metropolis, a melting-pot. There was barely any local accent to be heard, but instead of that the city had gained voice and breath, and with all the people rolling about in her bowels like marbles in a linnen sack, the city inhaled and exhaled, and hummed steadily. Sometimes at night, her breathing would nearly die away, becoming tiny and rythmic like a baby on its back. Sometimes at night, possibly mostly on Saturdays, the city would be screaming and yelling, panting and groaning. When the sun shone she laughed. When it rained she drew in a dreadfully long deep breath each time, and sighed it out again.
Tifa recognized the city's breathing; the sense of grand life embracing you as you walk down the main shopping street. She loved Kalm.
Besides that, it seemed that Kalm loved her. The Walhalla was doing well. Even though the Inn was filled mostly with refugees who were paying their stay by working for her, the little shop was doing very well (low prices) and the restaurant already had a good name (low prices) and besides, the number of guests for the inn was already increasing (you guessed it).
There was just the one problem, the one problem she didn't ever talk about with anyone -she was alone.
So there was the problem, and the explanation that nobody knew of the problem, rolled into one and the same. On the one hand, she needed someone to help her run the three businesses she had coughed up. One the other hand, she wanted someone to be her closest friend and confide. And she didn't really want to share her private emotions with Malien.
So one night, sitting behind her faithful computer in her faithful office typing away on her faithful keyboard, she composed a sign.
'Help Wanted', the sign read. Then it went on to describe the function and the responsabilities, etc. You know what these kind of signs look like. When it was printed, Tifa sat back in her chair and held it out in front of her. Was the lettering big enough? Did it draw attention? Any spelling mistakes? She caught two letters that should have been with a capital, and saw that she had spelled her own name wrong: 'Lockhart' instead of 'Lockheart'. Ha-ha. Dear God, she thought, I need coffee.
She corrected the mistakes and printed out another copy. There, that one's better. She shook her head at herself and stood up.
Now then.. she had to hang up the sign. She paused mid-step, and antagonized. She wanted Cloud to see the poster when he walked in. In all truth, she wanted him to be the one who applied for the job. So then she shouldn't hang the sign up in the window. She should just tell him about it herself. But what if I do tell him, she worried, and he flat out declines? Then what? Better to have the sign in the window, otherwise he'll think I was counting on him. Or I could just say that I wanted to ask him first before I hung it in the window. But I could also just hang it in the window and let him ask. No- then he'd think I wouldn't want to offer him the job, because I never mentioned it. But what if I say, 'hey, did you see the sign in my window? What do you think?' and all he says is, 'you misspelled your last name'?
She took a deep breath and walked to the stairs. Then that would be that. Then she would just have to live with it; someone else applying and getting the job, and Cloud could come and visit on Tuesdays, or something. Caught up in her thoughts as she was, she didn't notice someone running up the stairs until they ran into her. 'Ah!' she exclaimed in surprise, but didn't hit the ground because Cloud caught her on time. She had dropped the paper that said 'Help Wanted' on it. It wafted to the ground.
'Gotcha,' he said, with a winning smile, straightened her and gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Hi, Tifa!'
She blinked at him, taking a moment to react. 'Hi! What pills were you fed?' she asked evenly, meriting a playful scowl from Cloud. 'No pills no pills. Just having a good day.'
She smiled. 'I'm glad you've come to share it with me.'
He nodded and reached down. 'You dropped this when we collided,' he said, and then peered at the paper. After a moment's read, he looked up at her, blue eyes seeming bluer than usual in the intensity of his look. 'You're looking for someone to work here?'
She felt herself blush, and grew uncomfortable. 'I just printed it out..' she said, as if it were an excuse. 'I need help. Like, a deputy or something.' She shrugged and watched him skim the paper a little longer. 'What do you think?' she asked him. Then she pressed her eyes shut. Here it comes. What do you think, Cloud? I think you misspelled your own last name, Tifa. Yup. He's going to say it. I can't believe I forgot to correct that the second time I printed it out. Here it comes.
'When can I start?' was all he said, and after approximately 4.6 seconds of staring at him open-mouthed, that loose jaw tightened into a grin, then loosened again in laughter. Score!
*
And that was how they'd come to be, all over again. It was the most comfortable thing in the world to live and work together with Cloud; like they'd been doing it a thousand years already.
Tifa remembers it with clarity; which is only logical. It wasn't very long ago, not at all. But so much has happened since then, both she and Cloud have changed so severely.. it's like this life she leads now is different completely, like she died and came back again. But then, she's good at that. She remembers the first time she died and came back.
She died at Nibelheim, that day. When she came back she was elsewhere. Midgar.
*
It was not that she did not know that the train graveyard was a very dangerous place; it was simply that she did not care.
She clambered onto the ancient, rusting skeleton of a long-discarded train, and folded her legs beneath her as she sat down. The metal and decaying dirt surrounding her struck her as the scene for a hopelessly desolate play. The whole graveyard held that atmosphere of hopelessness, as if the trains were grieving as they passed to dust unguarded.
She looked up, from habit of looking up, and saw the woven metal framework of pipes and trays and beams, that was the very base of the Seventh Plate of Midgar. Even from the half a mile's distance that stood between her and it, she felt claustrophobic from beneath. Even from where she sat, hunkered near the massive train-wraith of iron, she could hear the endless metallic hum of the frosted gargantuan tube lights suspended under the Plate, making for but a sad excuse for starlight.
She looked apathetically out over all of Sector Seven. Unnaturally blue and green-lighted mist hung lazily a few feet above the ground. The Pillar stood off a ways to her right; beyond it, more to the left, she could see the Weapon Shop, the Materia Shop. A wry smile flickered on her features and died again. The bar.
She pulled her legs closer to her body, and wrapped her arms around them. She should go back soon. Barret would start getting worried. She always came here, even though there were steel-colored iridescent ghosts, small gossamer-winged dragons, and a freak carrying a staff, with half a horse and half a chariot beneath him, instead of legs. She felt at home here, alone with her thoughts, away from the gloom that no one else seemed to recognize, deep in the slums. She had never really felt like she belonged with the living anyways.
That thought was new, and entertained her for a little longer than most thoughts did. As of late, she had not been able to interest herself for anything for very long, as if she were living in a state of dreams, shadowed away from reality, watching everything through a distorted lens. A faint childhood memory of reading a scientific book, with a chapter on fisheyes, came to mind.
Troubled with the image of a fisheye hovering, taking the place of her own on opposite sides of her nose on her face, she sprang up, and jumped off the train. It was only a small leap to the ground, and she did it without thinking. Suddenly though, as she turned, she was struck with the strangest sense of forbearing, and fear, and realisation of something, and turned and studied the train.
Now she saw it was lying on its side, an oversized 5 painted on the naked, sky-turned flank. She imagined it, upright and without the paint cracked and scraped off. She imagined that people had ridden inside, day in and day out. Some riding back and forth to work, others taking a rare luxury, a trip. Her jaw fixed as she imagined what might have caused the giant gash in the front. Her mouth pursed as she estimated how many people might have died. Not wanting to think any more of it, she turned her back to the dead train, and marched solidly off. The train and the ghosts in it followed her silently, glidingly, to the end of the street.
*
A thousand tiny deaths is what she had died, once. Each time she thought about her parents she died again; they were in the ghost train that day, when it trailed after her. She died when she tried to remember the faces of her classmates in Nibelheim and realized she could not. She died when she remembered Cloud and hated him. She died again, from lack of anything else to do, when she was living in the slums. That time, it was Cloud who brought her to life.
*
She was used to the strange experiences with the people in the slums.
Once, she had been attacked by some man, a sex-deprived maniac no doubt. She had easily been able to overpower him, and had not thought of it again.
Once, a young boy had called out to her with a toothless mouth, and she had given him all the gil she had with her so he could buy some bread for himself and his sister.
Once, a woman had tugged her sleeve, her tear-streaked, hollow face a fearsome sight. She had caught the woman as she swooned, and had taken her back to the bar. After nursing her for a few days, the woman had lost her fever, and gained a few pounds. She had watched with a heavy heart as the woman went, waving gratefully to her. She always needed people to come into her life and keep her busy, keep her distracted. And as she watched the woman hobble off, she wished they might have traded places, perhaps, and she could have been free from eyes watching, mouths grinning.
She walked by an alley, and slowed as she heard rather dubious noises coming from it. She raised her eyebrows and wondered if it was another sex- deprived maniac. Curiosity invited her eyes down the alley, and she froze. It was not some guy being a sex-crazed maniac.
It was a young man, and he was fighting to stay standing. He was leaning heavily against a wall, panting so hard he sounded as if he were choking. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to see better in the artificial light. Sweat beaded on his bare upper-arms and face, running down in places between the muscles where the droplets had grown too fat to defy gravity. His jaw seemed clenched in pain. His eyes were pressed shut, eyebrows heavily pressed above them. He ran his free hand across his face, but it did not make any difference. He fell back against the wall, the other arm no longer able to support his full weight. Sickly, he slid to the ground, small shivers running over his skin. She saw him reach for something.
She swallowed and cursed herself for thinking she needed someone to take care of. At any rate, this man needed care. She suddenly felt small, and useless, and felt that, no matter how many sex-crazed maniacs she was able to take on, this man she would never be able to lift a finger against.
This thought scared her incredibly, more than any thought had scared her at all in the past seven months. To defy this thought, she stepped forward, and knelt beside the young man, where he sat on the ground. Shoulders hung forwards weakly, his breath had slowed. Eyes stared half-open at the mighty sword he held tightly gripped in his hand.
She toughened herself, and pressed a hand to his forehead. He burned with fever. He drew in a long shivering breath, and blinked. After a moment, his back arched, she imagined in pain. His head, young face adorned with straight, noble features, righted itself, and she met the most fascinating eyes she would ever see for the rest of her life.
She bit her lip and wondered why she was hoping she knew him.
*
Tifa had saved the world that day, when she found him.
*
She stood in the kitchen, feeling immensely sad, and heavy. A schoolbook image from her youth came forward, and she frowned. The god Atlas carried the world on his shoulders. She imagined it feeling something like this. Not as if she had the world on her shoulders, she knew that. Only her own.
There was always this feeling of alone, though. She was always alone, in everything, except for when she was taking care of Barret and Marlene. And then, in taking care of them, she was alone. She shook her head and went back to work. The bar would open again in the evening.
The young man had been doing well, it having been nearly a week since she had found him. It had taken her considerably more difficulty to bring him to the bar than to care for him afterwards. The first two days he had lain like a breathing corpse in his bed. He had slept incredible hours, so deep and so peaceful that she had the strange feeling that he had not slept like this in a long time. When he was not sleeping, the first two days, he was trying to sit up. She always gently pushed him back down, with a faint shaking of her head, letting a ghost of a smile play on her lips. He had not spoken a word yet, neither had she. Sometimes he drew deep breath, and then his jaw went slack, as if he had forgotten what he would like to say. Or as if he had forgotten how to say it. She never asked him anything, only studied him. She would not quite admit to herself she was fascinated.
She studied him when he was asleep as much as when he was awake. When he was asleep, he did not know. When he was awake, he studied the girl back. She did not mind his quiet, softly inquisitive gaze, even as it was in a blank set face. She hoped he did not mind her gazing at him. For days and days, her head pounded with the question who he was, why he seemed so dreadfully familiar.
After the first two days, he could sit up without collapsing. She had not spoken to him yet, nor he to her. Her smile had grown a little wider as he successfully kept himself up, supporting himself. She put a hand over his.
He looked up; his eyes flashed at her.
She was hurled into something unknown, deep and blue and so the smile on her face stiffened, and threatened to fail. He was.. she could not place it. She forced herself to keep looking, and after another moment of confusion and wonder, his eyes became less mystical, less difficult to meet. They were simply blue -deep, bright blue, long dark lashes casting shadows above them. Articulate eyebrows above. They were darker than the color of his hair, which was a gentle hue of gold..
A spirit drifted into her, a discolored and stained old bat, fluttering crookedly, blinded by the new light. These memories had flown away a long time ago, and she righted her back tensely as she tried to call them to mind. The bat fell to dust and she was left with the young man with the golden hair and the slightly darker eyebrows and the lovely eyes and the good-looking body, and she was left with confusion. She smiled that meaningless, frightened smile again, and left, still not having talked to him.
His expression had not changed the whole time he had been there. It always held the most odd combination of wonder and wisdom. It was as if he had already seen every insanity, felt every pang of guilt, and had already lived every second of a lethal, swollen wound. And still, even with this weight around him, he still held childlike innocence around him like a cloak, innocence and acceptance of what was happening to him.
This paradox, this same impossible mix of adulthood and childhood, this was what she had always felt. Wonder because often enough she felt young and naïve at everything she encountered. Wisdom because other times she saw that she had insight and understanding that were beyond her mere twenty years.
She padded into the kitchen and started doing dishes only because she did not really know what else she could do. Almost savagely she grabbed the first glass and scrubbed it under a rushing song of hot water.
Her hands were not really soft anymore; her ever-taxing training, and working here in the bar had taken care of that. She shrugged, and kept rubbing at the one stupid bit of rubbish clinging to the one stupid glass. She stopped, and stared down at the same hands in question. They were not really very long hands, or very pretty hands. Her nails were always ragged, bitted down to beneath the rim. Her cuticles were always torn, sometimes even bleeding. She wore gloves usually, thin suede gloves she had stolen out of a shop once. Her weapons slipped over these easily.
She scrubbed the third glass fanatically, trying to draw her attention away from the thought which was stubbornly presenting itself to her. She always took her gloves off when she cared for him. Him.
Well, of course, she reasoned immediately, how can you take care of a sick man when you are wearing gloves? Touching him was something she wanted to do with her skin, not with her weapons. This thought shocked her considerably, and her hands grew vehement as they cleaned the dishes.
His eyes were visible, in the back of her mind. Then, maybe it was not the image of his eyes themselves so much as that it was the feelings the eyes summoned in her. She figured it did not really matter which it was; it came down to the fact that she felt that way when she thought of his eyes. Her teeth bit restlessly into her bottom lip. Do the fucking dishes.
Knife. Fork. Glass. Pan. Fork. Glass. Glass. His eyes. Glass. Blood.
Her nose wrinkled, her mouth opening slightly to let out a quiet cry of surprise. How did that just happen? She held her hand up to her face; she swallowed in confusion. There was a smeared shard of glass, about three inches long, jutting out of the palm of her right hand. Blood traced the jagged edge where it had cut into the skin and flesh. It was deep, she saw, but somehow she could not be moved to pull it out. She watched in silent, macabre fascination as her blood, the airless color of deep red, mixed unnaturally with the dish soap and ran to the back of her hand, where it dripped unceremoniously down into the beladen sink.
She gingerly touched the glass sticking out of her hand, and noted it was rather sore but not that bad. Maybe it was just the shock. The soap stung into the wound, no doubt cleaning it at the same time, either cleaning it or poisoning it.
Carefully, ever so carefully, she touched the wedge of glass in her hand again. A feeling of surreality, of insubstantiality settled upon her, and she could not draw away her eyes. She did not notice how a tall figure stood silently in the doorway to the kitchen, and watched her, and after a few moments, grew a little tired, and opened his mouth to speak.
"Tifa."
Her head snapped up at him, her hand flashed away from the glass-cut one like lightning. Why the feeling of being a deer, trapped between pavement and headlights? The young man's expression was open and clear as always, his eyes meeting hers blankly.
Her mouth opened but she did not know to say what. His eyes rested on the broken glass, which was still in the palm of her hand, and his eyebrows drew together. She suddenly realised she had never told the young man her name. And she knew sure as hell that Barret had never told him either.
He walked over to her, taking careful, deliberate steps. She grew desperate as he neared her.
"What did you do?" he asked in that same soft voice with which he had uttered her name, her secret, and she was nailed to the very spot. The glass had not gone through, luckily. She thought she would have fainted if she had seen the faint glint of glass coming out in between the bones of the back of her hand.
"It was an accident." she said, taken aback by the rather broken ring to her voice.
He took her right hand lightly in his left, his palm pressing up against the back of her hand. Her blood ran cold. He was a head taller than she was. She looked up at him as he studied her hand for a moment, then carefully switched it to his right hand as he turned away to search.. he grabbed a clean rag from a pile of them, and turned to her again.
He met her eyes.
"Let me pull it out. It is pretty deep, but we can stop the bleeding."
She looked back at him, only vaguely aware of the vacant look she must be giving him. "Okay." she said after a moment.
Her jaw tightened only a little as he swiftly freed the glass from her hand. She let him tug her over to the sink and rinse out any splinters that might be left. She thought it was pleasant to feel him taking care of her.
"How did you know my name?" she asked the young man. He met her eyes so easily, even with that void expression to them.
He frowned lightly, for such a long time she thought she had not said the question out loud.
Then he looked up, blue eyes piercing. Was he angry at her?
"You are Tifa Lockheart, right?" his voice had something of a dare in it. Dare me wrong.
"Yes, I am."
"Good. I was afraid I had mistaken you for someone else."
Now, as she gazed at him, she was silent. Her hand had begun to throb lightly, but it did not bother her that much. She watched him, trying but failing hopelessly in discovering who the young man was.
"I.. forgive me. You seem so familiar, but I cannot seem to find your name, if I ever knew it -" she spoke hurriedly, and hurriedly he interrupted her.
"Cloud."
"Excuse me?"
"My name is Cloud Strife."
She stared at him emptily for another moment, as her tired brain clicked into discovering, into matching name and memory.
*
A/N: anybody who's reading.. I've taken it off hiatus for a while, this fic, to see what I can do to save it.. please. Forgive me if I fail. I promise to try, at least. My regards, I promise to explain this complex stuff soon. :) have a nice day.
*
'Fancy that,' Malien said, turning the tin over in her hands, 'this would make a lovely tea box.'
Tifa smiled and kept working. With Malien, everything was tea boxes -if you could put something inside something, well then you could certainly put tea in it. Tifa had never cared to pay attention to the details of Malien's room, but in a way she felt sure that Malien must have a corner or a drawer somewhere, filled with tins and jars and boxes in their turn filled with tea.
They were sorting through a bag of things which Tifa had bought at the local thrift shop. 'Seventeen cents an item, mum,' the fat man with the red nose and the scruffy beard told her, then turned back to his book. It looked old and valuable, with gold lining the pages, the black leather of the book faded but still firm in place.
She was confused for a moment when he called her 'mum', but then she stopped to consider he was saying 'ma'am' in his accent.
Her own crystal-sharp Nibel dialect had long faded, making way for the soft and melancholic sounds of the subterranean-Midgar accent. On top of the Plate they spoke the language properly, gutteral and trickling like sewage water.
She guessed the man who called her 'mum' was from an older time of Kalm, then; from before that the refugees from Midgar had flooded the town. Now Kalm had become a metropolis, a melting-pot. There was barely any local accent to be heard, but instead of that the city had gained voice and breath, and with all the people rolling about in her bowels like marbles in a linnen sack, the city inhaled and exhaled, and hummed steadily. Sometimes at night, her breathing would nearly die away, becoming tiny and rythmic like a baby on its back. Sometimes at night, possibly mostly on Saturdays, the city would be screaming and yelling, panting and groaning. When the sun shone she laughed. When it rained she drew in a dreadfully long deep breath each time, and sighed it out again.
Tifa recognized the city's breathing; the sense of grand life embracing you as you walk down the main shopping street. She loved Kalm.
Besides that, it seemed that Kalm loved her. The Walhalla was doing well. Even though the Inn was filled mostly with refugees who were paying their stay by working for her, the little shop was doing very well (low prices) and the restaurant already had a good name (low prices) and besides, the number of guests for the inn was already increasing (you guessed it).
There was just the one problem, the one problem she didn't ever talk about with anyone -she was alone.
So there was the problem, and the explanation that nobody knew of the problem, rolled into one and the same. On the one hand, she needed someone to help her run the three businesses she had coughed up. One the other hand, she wanted someone to be her closest friend and confide. And she didn't really want to share her private emotions with Malien.
So one night, sitting behind her faithful computer in her faithful office typing away on her faithful keyboard, she composed a sign.
'Help Wanted', the sign read. Then it went on to describe the function and the responsabilities, etc. You know what these kind of signs look like. When it was printed, Tifa sat back in her chair and held it out in front of her. Was the lettering big enough? Did it draw attention? Any spelling mistakes? She caught two letters that should have been with a capital, and saw that she had spelled her own name wrong: 'Lockhart' instead of 'Lockheart'. Ha-ha. Dear God, she thought, I need coffee.
She corrected the mistakes and printed out another copy. There, that one's better. She shook her head at herself and stood up.
Now then.. she had to hang up the sign. She paused mid-step, and antagonized. She wanted Cloud to see the poster when he walked in. In all truth, she wanted him to be the one who applied for the job. So then she shouldn't hang the sign up in the window. She should just tell him about it herself. But what if I do tell him, she worried, and he flat out declines? Then what? Better to have the sign in the window, otherwise he'll think I was counting on him. Or I could just say that I wanted to ask him first before I hung it in the window. But I could also just hang it in the window and let him ask. No- then he'd think I wouldn't want to offer him the job, because I never mentioned it. But what if I say, 'hey, did you see the sign in my window? What do you think?' and all he says is, 'you misspelled your last name'?
She took a deep breath and walked to the stairs. Then that would be that. Then she would just have to live with it; someone else applying and getting the job, and Cloud could come and visit on Tuesdays, or something. Caught up in her thoughts as she was, she didn't notice someone running up the stairs until they ran into her. 'Ah!' she exclaimed in surprise, but didn't hit the ground because Cloud caught her on time. She had dropped the paper that said 'Help Wanted' on it. It wafted to the ground.
'Gotcha,' he said, with a winning smile, straightened her and gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Hi, Tifa!'
She blinked at him, taking a moment to react. 'Hi! What pills were you fed?' she asked evenly, meriting a playful scowl from Cloud. 'No pills no pills. Just having a good day.'
She smiled. 'I'm glad you've come to share it with me.'
He nodded and reached down. 'You dropped this when we collided,' he said, and then peered at the paper. After a moment's read, he looked up at her, blue eyes seeming bluer than usual in the intensity of his look. 'You're looking for someone to work here?'
She felt herself blush, and grew uncomfortable. 'I just printed it out..' she said, as if it were an excuse. 'I need help. Like, a deputy or something.' She shrugged and watched him skim the paper a little longer. 'What do you think?' she asked him. Then she pressed her eyes shut. Here it comes. What do you think, Cloud? I think you misspelled your own last name, Tifa. Yup. He's going to say it. I can't believe I forgot to correct that the second time I printed it out. Here it comes.
'When can I start?' was all he said, and after approximately 4.6 seconds of staring at him open-mouthed, that loose jaw tightened into a grin, then loosened again in laughter. Score!
*
And that was how they'd come to be, all over again. It was the most comfortable thing in the world to live and work together with Cloud; like they'd been doing it a thousand years already.
Tifa remembers it with clarity; which is only logical. It wasn't very long ago, not at all. But so much has happened since then, both she and Cloud have changed so severely.. it's like this life she leads now is different completely, like she died and came back again. But then, she's good at that. She remembers the first time she died and came back.
She died at Nibelheim, that day. When she came back she was elsewhere. Midgar.
*
It was not that she did not know that the train graveyard was a very dangerous place; it was simply that she did not care.
She clambered onto the ancient, rusting skeleton of a long-discarded train, and folded her legs beneath her as she sat down. The metal and decaying dirt surrounding her struck her as the scene for a hopelessly desolate play. The whole graveyard held that atmosphere of hopelessness, as if the trains were grieving as they passed to dust unguarded.
She looked up, from habit of looking up, and saw the woven metal framework of pipes and trays and beams, that was the very base of the Seventh Plate of Midgar. Even from the half a mile's distance that stood between her and it, she felt claustrophobic from beneath. Even from where she sat, hunkered near the massive train-wraith of iron, she could hear the endless metallic hum of the frosted gargantuan tube lights suspended under the Plate, making for but a sad excuse for starlight.
She looked apathetically out over all of Sector Seven. Unnaturally blue and green-lighted mist hung lazily a few feet above the ground. The Pillar stood off a ways to her right; beyond it, more to the left, she could see the Weapon Shop, the Materia Shop. A wry smile flickered on her features and died again. The bar.
She pulled her legs closer to her body, and wrapped her arms around them. She should go back soon. Barret would start getting worried. She always came here, even though there were steel-colored iridescent ghosts, small gossamer-winged dragons, and a freak carrying a staff, with half a horse and half a chariot beneath him, instead of legs. She felt at home here, alone with her thoughts, away from the gloom that no one else seemed to recognize, deep in the slums. She had never really felt like she belonged with the living anyways.
That thought was new, and entertained her for a little longer than most thoughts did. As of late, she had not been able to interest herself for anything for very long, as if she were living in a state of dreams, shadowed away from reality, watching everything through a distorted lens. A faint childhood memory of reading a scientific book, with a chapter on fisheyes, came to mind.
Troubled with the image of a fisheye hovering, taking the place of her own on opposite sides of her nose on her face, she sprang up, and jumped off the train. It was only a small leap to the ground, and she did it without thinking. Suddenly though, as she turned, she was struck with the strangest sense of forbearing, and fear, and realisation of something, and turned and studied the train.
Now she saw it was lying on its side, an oversized 5 painted on the naked, sky-turned flank. She imagined it, upright and without the paint cracked and scraped off. She imagined that people had ridden inside, day in and day out. Some riding back and forth to work, others taking a rare luxury, a trip. Her jaw fixed as she imagined what might have caused the giant gash in the front. Her mouth pursed as she estimated how many people might have died. Not wanting to think any more of it, she turned her back to the dead train, and marched solidly off. The train and the ghosts in it followed her silently, glidingly, to the end of the street.
*
A thousand tiny deaths is what she had died, once. Each time she thought about her parents she died again; they were in the ghost train that day, when it trailed after her. She died when she tried to remember the faces of her classmates in Nibelheim and realized she could not. She died when she remembered Cloud and hated him. She died again, from lack of anything else to do, when she was living in the slums. That time, it was Cloud who brought her to life.
*
She was used to the strange experiences with the people in the slums.
Once, she had been attacked by some man, a sex-deprived maniac no doubt. She had easily been able to overpower him, and had not thought of it again.
Once, a young boy had called out to her with a toothless mouth, and she had given him all the gil she had with her so he could buy some bread for himself and his sister.
Once, a woman had tugged her sleeve, her tear-streaked, hollow face a fearsome sight. She had caught the woman as she swooned, and had taken her back to the bar. After nursing her for a few days, the woman had lost her fever, and gained a few pounds. She had watched with a heavy heart as the woman went, waving gratefully to her. She always needed people to come into her life and keep her busy, keep her distracted. And as she watched the woman hobble off, she wished they might have traded places, perhaps, and she could have been free from eyes watching, mouths grinning.
She walked by an alley, and slowed as she heard rather dubious noises coming from it. She raised her eyebrows and wondered if it was another sex- deprived maniac. Curiosity invited her eyes down the alley, and she froze. It was not some guy being a sex-crazed maniac.
It was a young man, and he was fighting to stay standing. He was leaning heavily against a wall, panting so hard he sounded as if he were choking. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to see better in the artificial light. Sweat beaded on his bare upper-arms and face, running down in places between the muscles where the droplets had grown too fat to defy gravity. His jaw seemed clenched in pain. His eyes were pressed shut, eyebrows heavily pressed above them. He ran his free hand across his face, but it did not make any difference. He fell back against the wall, the other arm no longer able to support his full weight. Sickly, he slid to the ground, small shivers running over his skin. She saw him reach for something.
She swallowed and cursed herself for thinking she needed someone to take care of. At any rate, this man needed care. She suddenly felt small, and useless, and felt that, no matter how many sex-crazed maniacs she was able to take on, this man she would never be able to lift a finger against.
This thought scared her incredibly, more than any thought had scared her at all in the past seven months. To defy this thought, she stepped forward, and knelt beside the young man, where he sat on the ground. Shoulders hung forwards weakly, his breath had slowed. Eyes stared half-open at the mighty sword he held tightly gripped in his hand.
She toughened herself, and pressed a hand to his forehead. He burned with fever. He drew in a long shivering breath, and blinked. After a moment, his back arched, she imagined in pain. His head, young face adorned with straight, noble features, righted itself, and she met the most fascinating eyes she would ever see for the rest of her life.
She bit her lip and wondered why she was hoping she knew him.
*
Tifa had saved the world that day, when she found him.
*
She stood in the kitchen, feeling immensely sad, and heavy. A schoolbook image from her youth came forward, and she frowned. The god Atlas carried the world on his shoulders. She imagined it feeling something like this. Not as if she had the world on her shoulders, she knew that. Only her own.
There was always this feeling of alone, though. She was always alone, in everything, except for when she was taking care of Barret and Marlene. And then, in taking care of them, she was alone. She shook her head and went back to work. The bar would open again in the evening.
The young man had been doing well, it having been nearly a week since she had found him. It had taken her considerably more difficulty to bring him to the bar than to care for him afterwards. The first two days he had lain like a breathing corpse in his bed. He had slept incredible hours, so deep and so peaceful that she had the strange feeling that he had not slept like this in a long time. When he was not sleeping, the first two days, he was trying to sit up. She always gently pushed him back down, with a faint shaking of her head, letting a ghost of a smile play on her lips. He had not spoken a word yet, neither had she. Sometimes he drew deep breath, and then his jaw went slack, as if he had forgotten what he would like to say. Or as if he had forgotten how to say it. She never asked him anything, only studied him. She would not quite admit to herself she was fascinated.
She studied him when he was asleep as much as when he was awake. When he was asleep, he did not know. When he was awake, he studied the girl back. She did not mind his quiet, softly inquisitive gaze, even as it was in a blank set face. She hoped he did not mind her gazing at him. For days and days, her head pounded with the question who he was, why he seemed so dreadfully familiar.
After the first two days, he could sit up without collapsing. She had not spoken to him yet, nor he to her. Her smile had grown a little wider as he successfully kept himself up, supporting himself. She put a hand over his.
He looked up; his eyes flashed at her.
She was hurled into something unknown, deep and blue and so the smile on her face stiffened, and threatened to fail. He was.. she could not place it. She forced herself to keep looking, and after another moment of confusion and wonder, his eyes became less mystical, less difficult to meet. They were simply blue -deep, bright blue, long dark lashes casting shadows above them. Articulate eyebrows above. They were darker than the color of his hair, which was a gentle hue of gold..
A spirit drifted into her, a discolored and stained old bat, fluttering crookedly, blinded by the new light. These memories had flown away a long time ago, and she righted her back tensely as she tried to call them to mind. The bat fell to dust and she was left with the young man with the golden hair and the slightly darker eyebrows and the lovely eyes and the good-looking body, and she was left with confusion. She smiled that meaningless, frightened smile again, and left, still not having talked to him.
His expression had not changed the whole time he had been there. It always held the most odd combination of wonder and wisdom. It was as if he had already seen every insanity, felt every pang of guilt, and had already lived every second of a lethal, swollen wound. And still, even with this weight around him, he still held childlike innocence around him like a cloak, innocence and acceptance of what was happening to him.
This paradox, this same impossible mix of adulthood and childhood, this was what she had always felt. Wonder because often enough she felt young and naïve at everything she encountered. Wisdom because other times she saw that she had insight and understanding that were beyond her mere twenty years.
She padded into the kitchen and started doing dishes only because she did not really know what else she could do. Almost savagely she grabbed the first glass and scrubbed it under a rushing song of hot water.
Her hands were not really soft anymore; her ever-taxing training, and working here in the bar had taken care of that. She shrugged, and kept rubbing at the one stupid bit of rubbish clinging to the one stupid glass. She stopped, and stared down at the same hands in question. They were not really very long hands, or very pretty hands. Her nails were always ragged, bitted down to beneath the rim. Her cuticles were always torn, sometimes even bleeding. She wore gloves usually, thin suede gloves she had stolen out of a shop once. Her weapons slipped over these easily.
She scrubbed the third glass fanatically, trying to draw her attention away from the thought which was stubbornly presenting itself to her. She always took her gloves off when she cared for him. Him.
Well, of course, she reasoned immediately, how can you take care of a sick man when you are wearing gloves? Touching him was something she wanted to do with her skin, not with her weapons. This thought shocked her considerably, and her hands grew vehement as they cleaned the dishes.
His eyes were visible, in the back of her mind. Then, maybe it was not the image of his eyes themselves so much as that it was the feelings the eyes summoned in her. She figured it did not really matter which it was; it came down to the fact that she felt that way when she thought of his eyes. Her teeth bit restlessly into her bottom lip. Do the fucking dishes.
Knife. Fork. Glass. Pan. Fork. Glass. Glass. His eyes. Glass. Blood.
Her nose wrinkled, her mouth opening slightly to let out a quiet cry of surprise. How did that just happen? She held her hand up to her face; she swallowed in confusion. There was a smeared shard of glass, about three inches long, jutting out of the palm of her right hand. Blood traced the jagged edge where it had cut into the skin and flesh. It was deep, she saw, but somehow she could not be moved to pull it out. She watched in silent, macabre fascination as her blood, the airless color of deep red, mixed unnaturally with the dish soap and ran to the back of her hand, where it dripped unceremoniously down into the beladen sink.
She gingerly touched the glass sticking out of her hand, and noted it was rather sore but not that bad. Maybe it was just the shock. The soap stung into the wound, no doubt cleaning it at the same time, either cleaning it or poisoning it.
Carefully, ever so carefully, she touched the wedge of glass in her hand again. A feeling of surreality, of insubstantiality settled upon her, and she could not draw away her eyes. She did not notice how a tall figure stood silently in the doorway to the kitchen, and watched her, and after a few moments, grew a little tired, and opened his mouth to speak.
"Tifa."
Her head snapped up at him, her hand flashed away from the glass-cut one like lightning. Why the feeling of being a deer, trapped between pavement and headlights? The young man's expression was open and clear as always, his eyes meeting hers blankly.
Her mouth opened but she did not know to say what. His eyes rested on the broken glass, which was still in the palm of her hand, and his eyebrows drew together. She suddenly realised she had never told the young man her name. And she knew sure as hell that Barret had never told him either.
He walked over to her, taking careful, deliberate steps. She grew desperate as he neared her.
"What did you do?" he asked in that same soft voice with which he had uttered her name, her secret, and she was nailed to the very spot. The glass had not gone through, luckily. She thought she would have fainted if she had seen the faint glint of glass coming out in between the bones of the back of her hand.
"It was an accident." she said, taken aback by the rather broken ring to her voice.
He took her right hand lightly in his left, his palm pressing up against the back of her hand. Her blood ran cold. He was a head taller than she was. She looked up at him as he studied her hand for a moment, then carefully switched it to his right hand as he turned away to search.. he grabbed a clean rag from a pile of them, and turned to her again.
He met her eyes.
"Let me pull it out. It is pretty deep, but we can stop the bleeding."
She looked back at him, only vaguely aware of the vacant look she must be giving him. "Okay." she said after a moment.
Her jaw tightened only a little as he swiftly freed the glass from her hand. She let him tug her over to the sink and rinse out any splinters that might be left. She thought it was pleasant to feel him taking care of her.
"How did you know my name?" she asked the young man. He met her eyes so easily, even with that void expression to them.
He frowned lightly, for such a long time she thought she had not said the question out loud.
Then he looked up, blue eyes piercing. Was he angry at her?
"You are Tifa Lockheart, right?" his voice had something of a dare in it. Dare me wrong.
"Yes, I am."
"Good. I was afraid I had mistaken you for someone else."
Now, as she gazed at him, she was silent. Her hand had begun to throb lightly, but it did not bother her that much. She watched him, trying but failing hopelessly in discovering who the young man was.
"I.. forgive me. You seem so familiar, but I cannot seem to find your name, if I ever knew it -" she spoke hurriedly, and hurriedly he interrupted her.
"Cloud."
"Excuse me?"
"My name is Cloud Strife."
She stared at him emptily for another moment, as her tired brain clicked into discovering, into matching name and memory.
*
A/N: anybody who's reading.. I've taken it off hiatus for a while, this fic, to see what I can do to save it.. please. Forgive me if I fail. I promise to try, at least. My regards, I promise to explain this complex stuff soon. :) have a nice day.