8

Barret could recognize an ex-ShinRa employee a mile away, but he seemed completely oblivious to a Sephiroth look-alike. Cloud, on the other hand, was almost exactly the opposite, and with good reason.

It was twelve-thirty now. Work had ended a half an hour ago and I was back home, sitting on the sofa in my pajamas and reading one of the out-of-town newspapers that Quintz occasionally sold. I didn't want to just sit there, lost in my thoughts, weighed down like the whole world had just taken a seat on my shoulders. Good news was a rare thing to read in this day and age, but it was simply the act of reading that I hoped would take my mind off things.

I was starting to realize things that I didn't want to realize. At the time I blamed it on me thinking too much, but really, I was giving it no more thought than any other person in my situation would.

Cloud was in the kitchen making tea. Usually by now he was asleep, but after getting a glance at Sef he seemed edgy, disturbed. Why tea? Well, I always thought Cid got us addicted to the stuff. We'd all be drinking tea until we were old and gray. And then we'd pass it on to our grandchildren...

Silly thought. I stopped myself before it got too far along. I had more important stuff to remind myself of...like how dead people didn't just up and come back to life. That was storybook material.

Now that I was looking back on it though, I saw that I really did give that kind of thing thought before. It was only one time, and very brief. Way back during our pursuit of Sephiroth, in Cosmo Canyon, Bugenhagen showed us an interesting little demonstration of Lifestream and what he called spirit energy. I remembered the little figure of a human being disappearing, blending into a great stream, and then appearing in a totally different location on the holographic image of a planet.

I never thought about that stuff very often. I wasn't given to philosophical thoughts like that. They usually got me itching to change the subject. It must drive people crazy to think of such far-out concepts like that all the time. People should live in the here-and-now; that was much healthier. Right?

But what if Sephiroth's so-called spirit energy did the same thing that Bugenhagen's model showed? What if he died and was born again somewhere else? Somewhere else like here. Could that happen?

Was I falling for someone I hated so much? God, the idea of being attracted to the man who messed up my life so badly was sickening. I would never let that happen.

Yet at the same time, I didn't want to let Sef go. I didn't want to shut him out of my life simply because I was sitting here late at night thinking more than I should. I could be wrong, I assured myself. Bugenhagen's model was just that---a model, a demonstration, an example. Nothing more. I couldn't go around applying that little scene to every situation in my life. And besides, that feeling of helping him, of healing him where he was hurting, had yet to leave me. I was starting to cling to that idea.

As if I had to be depressed and worried even further, I was pulled from my thoughts by an article in the paper about declining school attendance. It was one of the smaller headlines in the middle of all sorts of other news, mostly of the social kind. The writer of the article had asked a young guy, sixteen years old, "So you don't bother to get up early anymore?"

His response echoed all the negativity that a post-apocalyptic world was forcing on him. "Nah, why should I? No one else goes. It's pointless. The whole world's going to hell anyway."

I frowned. Yep, in about fifty years or so I could see humanity as this uneducated barbarian race, who, given a few more centuries, would wipe themselves out due to the things that always prevailed---greed, petty hatred, and vengeance. Ah, I should be less pessimistic, shouldn't I? But look at everything I had to deal with now. It was hard to think good thoughts, and society was an animated corpse at this point, more or less. It was only a matter of time before it would finally be put to rest.

Would I be alive to see that?

Cloud came trudging in with a cup of tea in hand. I lowered the newspaper and took notice. "You didn't pour me any?"

"Pour it yourself," he grumbled.

Oh, right, he was in a funny mood. Almost forgot. He took a seat on the sofa beside me, but not at all close, keeping his distance. I knew him well enough---he didn't want to be touched or questioned right now.

We sat in silence. I got back to my paper, absently chewing on my lip, and he was sipping his tea. I could feel the tension mounting between us, the "who's gonna kill who first" kind. I hated it.

I went from chewing my lip to biting on one of my nails. It seemed like all this would never end. I was about to give serious thought to screaming my lungs out when Cloud finally spoke to me. "I was thinking," he started. "I got hit with the weirdest thought..."

I turned to look at him. He wasn't looking at me, or at anything in particular; he was just staring straight ahead. I spoke. "About what?"

He shifted a bit in his spot, something he always did when he was uncomfortable. There was a moment's worth of hesitation before he answered. "No, forget about it. It's stupid. I shouldn't even be thinking stuff like that."

No, he didn't answer directly, but I knew what he was implying. I knew what he came close to saying and surprisingly it didn't bother me much to not hear it from him. Sef's an awful lot like Sephiroth, isn't he, I thought. Yes, you can see it too, can't you, Cloud? You feel it, and I'm starting to see it myself.

So then, why couldn't I believe it? Cosmo Canyon preaching and paranormal thoughts aside, was it really that scary to accept?

Yes, yes it was.

I hated Sephiroth, but I didn't hate Sef. If anything, the guy was quickly becoming a potential boyfriend. That had to mean something. If Sephiroth and Sef were the same person, wouldn't I have hated Sef right off the bat?

But all those strange feelings I had, all those weird ones that made me sick and had my head swimming... They had to mean something, too.

I rose from the sofa and began to head upstairs. I turned around when I reached the foot of the steps. I told Cloud, "I'm going to bed now. I'm really tired. Don't stay up too late, okay?"

His response: that aimless stare that wasn't really staring at anything, the one that basically told me that too much mental activity was going on for him to pay attention.

I turned and climbed the stairs up to my room. Once there, I turned out the lights and got into bed, falling asleep with fear and worry as my company, and unsettling darkness as my lullaby.

I had a dream that night that I'd end up wanting to forget.

In it things were dark all around, very dark, and I had no idea where I was. I was coming out of the darkness and right ahead of me was a circle of gray floor, maybe a rug or something. I couldn't tell. There wasn't any light from above or anything, so I didn't know how that spot escaped the darkness, but it did, somehow. In the center of the gray floor was a little girl with long dark hair. She was sitting, hunched over something.

Her shoulders heaved and I could hear sobbing. Almost instantly my heart broke into pieces. I had to help her, whoever she was. That was all I could think about. I had to protect her. She needed me.

I ran over to her. I opened my mouth to call her name, but that was when I realized that I didn't know it. All I knew was that she was crying and I had to make her feel better. Just the sight of her was tearing me up inside.

I reached her and knelt down by her side. "Don't cry, don't cry," I told her. For one reason or another, I was nervous. I put a hand on her back for comfort. "Don't cry," I said again.

The little girl raised her head and looked up at me. My heart skipped a beat. I saw myself in her fathomless little eyes. She was more than just a little girl. "Fix it!" she whined. "Fix it pleeeeeease!"

"Fix what?" I asked her.

"My doll's broken! Fix it!" She pointed to something on the gray floor that I hadn't noticed before: a broken doll, all in pieces, in a pile at her feet. That sight stung me too.

"Fix it!" the little girl whined again, more insistent this time.

I felt my eyes go wet then. I felt so terrible at that moment. This poor thing, crying over a broken toy. I had to do something. I had to fix it...but I didn't know how. I didn't even know where to begin. It was really smashed up.

"I'm sorry," I said, and my voice cracked as I spoke. "I don't know how... I can't fix it, I---"

The little girl shifted away from me, almost like I'd just slapped her in the face. She gave me such an awful look, a look that had me feeling ten times guiltier than I already did. Then she turned away and bawled all over again. She was really loud, and it was killing me. I was helpless. I couldn't do anything for her and it was torturing me.

Then I realized something. "Wait! I can buy you a new one!" I offered.

"No!" the little girl protested. "I don't WANT a new one! I want this one fixed!" Then she went back to that terrible crying.

I opened my mouth to say something else---I wasn't really sure what I was going to say---until a voice from somewhere intervened.

"Peace," it said. I looked this way and that, all over, trying to find who was speaking, but I couldn't. It continued. "Sometimes what's old and broken shouldn't be fixed."

I could've sworn that the voice was coming from the darkness ahead of the little girl and I, but I still wasn't too sure. Either way, it was a nice-sounding voice, light, pleasant. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman's voice, though.

But as nice as it sounded, something about it put me on the defensive. It sounded to me like the speaker was out to hurt the little girl, or to keep her suffering, or something like that. What really drilled that idea into my head was the sight of the little girl getting angry and even more upset at those words.

"You shut up!" she said through her tears. "You shut up!"

"Crying won't fix things. Crying will only make parting with it worse. Stop your crying."

The voice didn't sound so patronizing that time. That was the last straw for me; now I had to stick up for the girl. She was all alone; she needed me.

"You shut up!" I cried to the voice, wherever it was. I sounded just like the little girl, I thought, but I kept on going. "You shut up and leave her alone!" I felt a single tear crawl down my face then, but I didn't care.

"Don't defend her," the voice warned me.

"Don't tell me what to do! You leave her alone, you hear me?" I shouted back. Then suddenly, I was hit with the thought of lashing out---as in actually attacking whoever this was. Before I could give it any more thought, I reached into the pockets of my pajama pants. I forgot what I came up with, but it was fairly big and hard. I pitched it ahead of me, where I thought the speaker was.

Did it hit the voice? I couldn't be certain. There was no sound, no cry of pain. Nothing. I was afraid then, afraid that something would happen, that something would come to punish me for doing what I did.

The little girl stopped her howling and turned to me again. She said, "Fix it! Fix it for me!" This time though, she was smiling. She looked hopeful, like my attack on the voice gave her reason to think that I suddenly could fix her doll. "Please? Fix it for me!"

The voice hadn't left us. "Don't fix it," it told me. "It's old and broken. It must be thrown away."

"Don't listen to him!" said the little girl desperately. "Don't listen to him!"

But I started to listen...and think. Sometimes, what's old and broken shouldn't be fixed. My eyes fell on the doll. It'd been busted up pretty badly; it probably was beyond fixing. But the little girl couldn't possibly understand; she was too young. All she knew was that her doll was broken and that obviously she loved it very much and didn't want to leave it. That voice shouldn't be so harsh, no matter how wise it was.

The girl must've seen my expression falter, because her whole attitude changed then. "Don't you listen to him!" she hissed. "If you do..."

Was she threatening me?

Before she could finish what she was saying, the voice interrupted her. "Leave it! You have no more need of it, but you're too selfish to see that! Leave it!"

"NO!" the little girl countered. She got to her feet and stamped her right foot. "No, no, NO!"

Suddenly she didn't seem so heart wrenching to me anymore. She seemed bad. The roles had changed; now the voice seemed like the good side. It was the side that made sense anyway.

As if she could hear my thoughts, the little girl faced me again. My eyes grew wide. Her tears were dark now, dark red. Blood. It was the ugliest sight I ever saw: her innocent face was swollen, streaked with scarlet, her eyes just as red. And burning. They burned into me as they looked at me.

"Don't you LISTEN!" she cried. Her voice was deep now, and it terrified me. "Don't you LISTEN to him! Don't you leave me!"

She had me pinned to the spot I was standing at with those fiery eyes. And the sound of her voice... I was paralyzed. I tried to scream, but it came out as a whisper. I tried to tell her to stop, but the same thing happened.

Then I started crying. I was afraid of her. No one would come for me either; I was all alone here, all alone with this creepy little brat. I reached up to wipe my tears away. When my hands left my face, I noticed something dark on them.

Blood.

I looked back at the little girl, and everything hit me then.

"Go," said the voice. Was it talking to me?

The little girl took a step closer to me. She started taunting me. "Daddy, daddy! Don't leave me!" she said mockingly. Her face, once so pretty, was twisted now, disfigured, ugly, marred with lines of blood.

"Go!" the voice said again, desperately. But I couldn't; I was still paralyzed.

"Daddy, daddy!" the little girl continued. "Did Sephiroth do this to you?"

"What?" I managed to whisper. Those words cut through me like a knife. I crumpled. I hit the floor, on my knees, and buried my face in my hands. Why did she say such an awful thing? Why did she have to remind me of that? Suddenly I missed my father more than anything in the world. I wanted to die.

"Say no more!" the voice cried out. "Leave now!"

The little girl turned on the voice. "I will NOT leave! Tifa doesn't WANT me to leave!" She turned back to me, the ugly little thing, like she was waiting for me to give my approval.

I didn't give it to her. I lifted my head and said very softly, "No. I do want you to leave."

The ugly little girl looked shocked. Then she sneered at me. "I hate you!" she spat. "I HATE YOU!"

Then the voice spoke up again. "Flee, Tifa." It spoke calmly this time.

The little girl wailed, covering her ears with her hands. "No! DON'T LEAVE ME!"

"Go now!" the voice urged me.

The little girl started sobbing again. She fell to her knees like I had done, her face in her hands. Her crying was quiet, kind of like the way it was before. I got curious. I got to my feet and took a step toward her.

She looked over at me. Her face was normal again; her tears weren't bloody. She looked pretty again. "Don't leave me," she repeated. Her voice was just like a little girl's should be. It started to make me feel sad and sympathetic again. I took another step toward her, uncertain as I was.

"NO!" said the voice, and I backed away. "Leave! Leave now!"

The little girl got to her feet again, and again her eyes began to glow. "I HATE YOU!" she said, facing the direction that I always thought the voice had been coming from. "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"

I was already running as fast as my feet could move. For some reason, I felt like I wasn't running fast enough. It was almost like the air around me had turned into water. I felt like I was running in slow motion.

The little girl was still screaming. "I HATE YOU!"

And the voice was still insisting that I run. I obeyed, pushing further into blackness.

I awoke to sunshine. Rainy April was slowly giving way to May. I was tossing and turning amongst my bed sheets, eyes still closed, my heart pounding.

I didn't want to wake up. I knew the nightmare wasn't real---it didn't quite feel real to me---but I was still afraid that there would be blood on my pillow and two burning eyes waiting for me to rise. I hadn't had a dream that graphic since the days right after Meteor. A lot of things I thought I no longer got I was getting again. History was repeating itself.

Repetition was essential to learning, I heard somewhere.

Eventually I got...gutsy, you could say, and resigned myself to opening my eyes. I guess I didn't have to mention how happy I was to see my room in all its normalcy staring back at me. No freaky little girls, no bizarre, genderless voices echoing from the far and yonder. No broken dolls, no urge to run away.

I glanced at my bedside clock automatically. Eight twenty-two. This was earlier than my usual rising time on a workless day like this Monday, yet I had no urge to go back to sleep. For all I knew, another weird dream could be waiting for me.

I untangled myself from the bed sheets and sat up, swinging my legs over and off the side of the bed. Maybe it was the lack of rain that made me feel cheerier. I had yet to shake the weird feeling of the dream, but I was certain that if I did something to get my mind off it, by noon, it would be simply an unpleasant memory.

Another to add to the pile, right?

I left my bed and headed for my window, throwing it wide open. The air in Quintz was always so nice. It was a little warm out but nothing too oppressive. Just standing there and admiring the scenery made me feel relaxed. I wanted to do something with myself at the moment, something that would get the remains of those icky feelings of yesterday out of me. I wanted to go running.

Ha, I hadn't done that in a while. Come to think of it, I hadn't done anything in a while to keep myself in my old shape. I was getting soft and that bothered me a little. Zangan wouldn't be pleased, I chided myself.

I went to get dressed then, in a pair of tiny little running shorts---blue, with white stripes down the sides---and a white sports bra. I gave some thought to wearing a tank top, but then I reminded myself: I was going running; the last thing I needed to be was bouncing all over. And besides, I wasn't going out to attract any attention.

That made me think about a time not too long after Meteor, when Cloud, Barret, Marlene, and I were little more than nomads, just wandering the world. We were in Costa del Sol and I was jogging on the beach. There was this nice-looking guy in the water swimming---backstroke if I remembered right---and he caught my eye. He winked at me; I smiled back at him shyly. He wasn't all dramatic about it; his tongue wasn't hitting the ground---er, the water---so I was really complemented.

But he wasn't looking where he was going, only at me. He ended up ramming headfirst into another swimmer, a woman no less. She got up out of the water and started cursing a blue streak. I felt terrible, but I snickered as I jogged away.

I was smiling now. God, I didn't count on doing that so fast.

I got my hair up into a ponytail and jammed my feet into an old pair of sneakers, and then it was down the steps. I almost rushed out the door without taking my keys...and without checking to see if Cloud was awake or not.

Thankfully he hadn't fallen asleep on the sofa, or I would've felt guilty. He must be up in his room. I toyed with the idea of knocking and making sure he was okay before I left, but then I figured he wouldn't be up for a while yet. I could get away with a quick run, and he might still be in a mood anyway. I told myself that I'd only be gone for ten minutes, and when I got back maybe I'd make him some breakfast, something to cheer him up.

Keys in pocket, I left the house. I started my run by going north, in the direction that led to the city of Reine. Reine, where Sef made his home. One day I'd go there and see him, I told myself. Soon.

As I jogged, my spirits lifted. The pavements weren't all dark and ugly from rain and everything sparkled with sunshine. The whole world seemed to be greeting it. Quintz hadn't seen a truly sunny day in a while.

Maybe it was the nice weather, or maybe it was my own optimism. I couldn't tell, but one of those things served to make me forget about my troubles for a little bit. Again I fell back into denial. Again I was content to leave Sef and Sephiroth as separate people. Any advances I made in realizing the truth, I had pushed back and forgotten.

Because I wanted to forget them. The little girl was still clinging to the broken doll, to a painful past that was just too comforting to abandon.