9

What should I call this part now, irony? Hmmm. Well, best not to get too far ahead of myself.

After jogging north for a while, I eventually made a u-turn, crossing the street and heading south on the other side. The light of the rising sun was blocked out by rows of buildings, mainly apartments.

I thought of Barret and Marlene as I passed them by, and that in turn got me thinking about my upcoming birthday party. April had passed in a flash; it was almost hard for me to believe that it'd be May soon. I'd finally see everyone again in one place.

All except for Vincent. Back in February, when Cloud and I were writing invitations, I remember him coming up in our conversation. "I want him to be there," I told Cloud. "We fought together. I'm sure he didn't forget about that." Never mind the fact that he disappeared after we landed the Highwind.

Cloud shrugged noncommittally, the way he usually did when there were no easy answers. "Be kinda hard to forget about what we've been through, right? And he did come back to us. He didn't have to, but he did, just like everyone else."

In other words, when Cloud had sent everyone off the Highwind on that long-ago day to find their reasons for fighting, Vincent had returned along with everybody who had joined our cause. He had a reason for being with us, for fighting at our side. He came off as being cold, but I knew he wasn't really like that. I remember when we first found him in the ShinRa Mansion. He scared me at first---and with good reason, considering he was just lying there in a coffin---but when he spoke about Lucrecia, there was such warmth in his voice. It was really nice. That was how I knew he ran deeper than he seemed...or wanted to seem.

"But we don't know where he is," Cloud continued. "He could be anywhere for all we know."

"What about Nibelheim? ---The ShinRa Mansion! Maybe he went back there," I offered.

Cloud raised his eyebrows. "You got the ShinRa Mansion's mailing address? Besides, if you ask me, after being locked up in that basement for so long, after getting a taste of freedom, I don't know why he'd want to go back. You know what I mean?"

And so ended any chance of Vincent coming to the party. Still, I clung to the hope that somehow he'd find us and make a little appearance for old times' sake.

By now I'd grown tired of jogging. The back of my neck was sweaty and my leg muscles wouldn't be able to run another inch, so I cut them a break and started walking. Before I went back home, I decided to make a quick stop at the newspaper stand in Downtown to pick up some reading material. That would turn out to be a very fortunate decision for me, something that would clear up a few things I had placed somewhere in the back of my mind.

I was down there in ten minutes, more or less. It was still early so the streets were peaceful and quiet. Against my face the morning air felt unusually cool, thanks to my run. I must've looked so flushed.

There at the stand was Sef, getting something for himself, a magazine by the looks of it. Now how was I supposed to react? Last night's dream came dashing towards the front of my brain, this whole big wave of unwanted thoughts and creepy feelings. That should have made me afraid of him, shouldn't it?

It didn't. If anything, looking at Sef made me feel better, less afraid. I had no idea why.

Before I could make up my mind on whether I should try to slip away unseen or rush up to meet him, he caught my eye. He smiled, just a little bit, those perfect lips quirking up ever so slightly. More than anything else, he looked innocent at that moment.

I was magnetized, drawn to him by something I couldn't quite grasp, something that was eluding my understanding. All I knew then was that I felt sure of myself. I should go to him.

We met each other halfway.

"I..."

"You're..."

We'd started speaking at the same time, and then we stopped, laughing at ourselves. I opened my mouth again, but Sef beat me to the draw.

"I didn't expect to see you here so early."

I smiled wanly. "That makes two of us. I didn't expect to get up so early either, but I couldn't sleep so I went for a run..." I stopped, feeling a little silly. "I must look terrible now."

Sef studied me presently. "Not really," he said at last. "You could look worse."

I opened my mouth there, at first a little insulted, but then when I got a good look at his expression my anger faded. He was teasing me: his face was lost somewhere between no-nonsense and utter irony, the kind of matter-of-fact humor that a firmly grounded realist would have. I kind of expected him to have that kind of sense of humor, what with him being a writer and all.

At that thought his new magazine caught my attention. "There an article in there you wrote? I remember that night when you showed me and Gigi something you did for a newspaper," I added, for clarification.

He didn't bat an eye, only smiled a little bit. "Yes," he admitted. "There's a certain sort of pride I get when I see my work in print. Sometimes I read over it again and I wonder what motivated me to write the way I did."

"Can I see it?" I asked him.

"If you want." He passed the magazine to me, adding, "Page eleven."

I went to open it, but not before stealing a glance at its name. Cosmo Monthly. That sounded a bit familiar, I thought. I could've sworn I saw an earlier issue of that magazine long ago, back in the canyon town that was obviously its namesake. It was in one of the elders' quarters there. I forgot which elder though, since it'd been almost two years and there were so many elders at that place.

I flipped through the pages until I came to the eleventh one. The article was called "What Went Out With Mako" and beneath those big bold letters was Sef's name, in quotations. For this magazine article, he was listed as a guest columnist.

I was hit with a fragment of a memory, something that might have been a lot less fuzzy had I not been drunk at the time: Gigi had questioned Sef on why his name had been in quotations in the newspaper. Sef told her that it was the only name he'd given the paper's editors. It was a disguise, a nom de plume maybe, something he was hiding behind.

A crop of unwanted thoughts bloomed at the back of my mind; I mentally stamped them out. I started skimming the article with my eyes, wishing I could sit down someplace. I liked to relax whenever I was reading something.

Sef either read my mind or was a very good guesser. Either way, his suggestion at that moment was so convenient. "You may want to sit for that one; it's a long article."

I raised my head and looked around. Downtown Quintz being as crowded as it was, there was no available place for me to sit.

"This way."

I turned and saw Sef pointing in the direction of the newspaper stand. It dawned on me then, where he meant to take me---there was a little spot on the outskirts of this city, a wild meadow that eventually gave way to the thick forest that made up most of the landscape of this part of the world near Gongaga. It was on the roadside and there were the remnants of what looked like an old bus stop there, a few benches and a pole bearing a half-torn sign. I hadn't been down that far many times, but it'd been on Gigi's town tour long ago when I first came here. That was how I knew about it.

I walked by Sef's side the whole time. I had his magazine in hand, folded open to the page with his article, occasionally shooting it a curious glance every so often. We were mostly quiet, but for once it wasn't awkward or unwanted. It was pleasant.

I could hardly believe how relaxed I was at the time. It was as if every bit of worry I carried had been wrung out of me like a sponge. Yeah, I thought about last night's dream, but even that couldn't make me feel terrible. Something about those moments made it shrivel. It was no longer this huge, hulking monster now, but a tiny little thing, like an annoying dog that kept biting at your ankles because it couldn't do much of anything else. I felt like I could kick it and send it soaring into the woods far ahead, where the street wound up and vanished into the shadows it cast. So long, nightmare. You were a pain in the ass while you lasted.

We got to the benches and took a seat. Sef ended up on my right. He was watching me with a sort of detached fascination while I read his work. He was polite enough not to bother me with questions while I was reading, which I was grateful for.

Lots of things stood out in the article (which spanned two-and-a-half pages), but one part in particular caught my eye:

"It had been argued for the longest time what Mako truly was, though the researchers at Cosmo Canyon seemed to know more about this long before any other city on the Planet. They believed that Mako, Lifestream, was not only the lifeblood of the Planet, but also its consciousness, a physical stream that was really the collective body of an endless number of individuals long passed: a river of souls.

"Many have said that if ShinRa continued its usage of Lifestream, manufacturing it into Mako energy, then the Planet would die. But what most people didn't think was that all the Mako that had been used, that immeasurable amount, had already caused death to a number of consciousnesses too high to count. Entire spirits, formerly actual, living people, had been completely unmade. What had once been human beings had met with the purest form of destruction: complete and utter obliteration."

What went out with Mako... I looked up, away from the glossy magazine pages, feeling like I'd just ripped myself out of a trench on the ocean floor. My head was swimming with a thousand questions, every single one of them as pressing as the next. I only asked Sef one, however, without giving him so much as a brief glance. "Have you ever been to Cosmo Canyon?"

He shifted a little. "No."

"You should go there. I think you'd like it there."

What were my other questions? Well, they weren't really questions per se. They were taunts, in a sense. I was tempted to ask if Sef had ever worked for ShinRa, but that was obvious: his Mako eyes gave his former SOLDIER status away. I was tempted to ask if he had ever been a scientist or some kind of researcher in Midgar or some other place, given his down-to-earth approach, but that already had an answer too. If he had been in SOLDIER, he couldn't possibly have worked in any other field. He didn't look old enough to have retired from an army, which would've been necessary if he really had gone on to pursue a different career.

I was also curious about his use of the word "consciousness" in his article. I heard it used before by Bugenhagen...and also by Aeris.

Sef didn't respond to my suggestion. I stopped reading and spared him a look. Turned out he was already staring at me. "You think it's bad?" he inquired. There was a blend of emotions in his eyes, so tightly woven that I couldn't separate and make sense of them.

I shook my head. "No, it's not that... It's... It's very deep." I paused. "How do you know so much?" I was squinting at him now.

He shrugged a bit. "You could assume that all of that's just speculation. Educated guesses. Or just assumptions from someone who thinks too much." Irony left a strong flavor in that last part of his sentence.

"It sounds like more than that to me," I ventured. To be honest, I wasn't sure exactly where I was heading with my questioning, only that there was something right out of my reach that I wanted to grab. "How you described the Lifestream as a group of consciousnesses...I've heard that before." I stopped momentarily, deciding how to word my thoughts. "An Ancient said the same thing, along time ago."

I ended up giving him the wrong impression. He shot me a strange look. "Ancient? You think I'm a Cetra?"

"Oh, no, no, that's not what I mean! I just... You, you're so... You know so..." While I was struggling to explain myself, he was grinning at me. "What? I'm not making sense, am I?"

"It's not that. I was just teasing you."

My face went blank. "Oh." Then I smiled, feeling a bit foolish. I laid the magazine to rest in my lap, still folded open to the eleventh page. I turned to Sef again. "Well, actually, I always felt there was something you weren't telling me..."

See, I was doing the teasing now. I was smiling at him and everything. The next thing he said though, despite his own little grin, was more serious than I could've anticipated. "There's a lot I haven't told you yet."

I flashbacked to that day out in the rain, Sunday. God, he was being as cryptic now as he had been then. That wasn't starting to scare me the way it should have; I didn't feel any subconscious warnings calling to me. Instead I felt frustrated. I wanted to know all of his answers then. Guessing games grew irritating fast.

I faced him, no longer beaming, my mouth like a nail. "I want you to tell me someday. I don't feel right, sitting here and talking to you when I know so little about you. You know what I mean?" I'm trying to find you, I wanted to scream. Truth was, I already found him a while ago, whenever my suspicions would breathe down my neck. I had found him then. Yet this time I meant it in a different sense: I wanted to find the person sitting beside me. I didn't care who he was or what he did, even if I thought I was wrong in suspecting him then. I just wanted to know Sef the person, because I couldn't stop thinking about him.

He reached out for me then, and touched my bare shoulder. His smile then was melancholic. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then tried again with, "You really want to know, don't you?" And his eyes were locked with mine.

I stared right back at him. I felt so strong, so sure of myself at that moment, maybe more than I ever had before. I nodded.

"I'll tell you someday," he said, with maddening vagueness.

"But I want to know now," I protested. "I feel... I don't even know why I'm sitting here with you, but...I feel that I should. I feel that I can talk to you. And I want you to talk to me."

He leaned in toward me, closer. "And I told you, I will." His voice grew softer, almost whispery. "Give me some time."

A little voice at the back of my mind said, what he'll say, you already know, but I mentally gave it a swift kick. I didn't care if I already knew or not; I wanted to hear it from him---if that was really it, if he really was...

"I don't have the patience of a saint," I warned him teasingly, "so don't keep me waiting."

"I don't like talking much about the past..."

"It's okay. You can trust me."

"I can?"

"Uh-huh."

Somehow, our faces managed to get really close. But then again, I probably hadn't noticed that because I was paying too much attention to his mouth, watching his lips move as he spoke. I raised my eyes to meet his, and in those glowing depths I saw a world of pain, stretched out against a backdrop of teal green. Had I not been through that ordeal with Cloud in the Lifestream so long ago, I wouldn't have been prepared for what I saw in Sef. And it wasn't just pain that lurked in his eyes---there was sorrow too. And regret. And shame. The shadows of what he had yet to expose to me were laid out for me to peruse, like one of the newspapers that held his writings. I felt so much compassion for him then that I found it hard to breathe.

That was what was calling to me from within him? Damn, did I have my work cut out for me.

I didn't remember which one of us initiated it, but pretty soon my lips were pressed against his, gently. Reflexively I closed my eyes. I kissed him again, once, twice, over and over. My only reminder of where I was at was the breeze that passed us by.

He was warm and tasted sweet and I felt myself melding into him, lost in the moment and not at all wanting to open my eyes and remind myself that I couldn't do this all day. At the same time, I didn't quite feel relaxed: there was something inside me that seemed to be running, heading someplace, wanting something else.

He caught me off guard when he opened his mouth a little wider, and consequently mine as well. When I felt his tongue brush against mine, I mechanically reached up and put my right hand on his shoulder. I picked up a little twinge of hesitancy from him; whether it was from what he did or what I did I probably would never know. But I sparred with him, tongue against tongue. I was satisfied not only because there was more physical contact between us now, but also because it was substituting well for the intellectual intercourse I wasn't receiving.

I felt his arm snake around my waist and we momentarily separated. He pulled me over and onto his lap. The magazine that had been resting open on mine had tumbled to the ground. He swore.

I was straddling his legs now, begging for things to resume. "The hell with it," I whispered to him, inching closer again. The only thing on my mind when I looked at him then was "more." And that was just what he gave me.

I noticed that his hands remained where he had placed them last, on my lower back. They never once moved either up or down. Being gentlemanly, weren't you? Oh, but I wouldn't have minded if you'd have forgotten your nice manners. Still I wasn't as shameless as, say, Gigi was. I knew this couldn't go any further, and I didn't want it to, not yet. I didn't like to rush things.

Eventually we broke again, but it seemed to be a mutual thing and I needed air. I'd been drowning in him for God only knew how long. I kissed his face a few times, ran my fingertips along his jaw line. That entire moment seemed delicate, fragile, and I wanted to preserve every bit of it. My eyes were still half closed. I felt motivated then to push the issue of what he wasn't telling me yet, so I whispered, "Promise me you'll tell me one day. Promise me you'll tell me everything." The moment I spoke those words, I felt as though I'd given in to something that went far beyond the two of us, sitting here on this old bench.

Sef laughed a bit. "A promise?"

"Yes. Promise me. I'll feel safer that way." I grinned. Wow, this was bringing back memories. I was ready to have a good laugh at myself then. Yet this time it didn't seem so futile or childish.

"I'll give you my word then," grunted Sef. "Is that good enough?"

I nodded against him. "Yes."

He chuckled deeply. I could feel the sound vibrating in his throat. "I would've told you anyway."

"I know, but I just want to feel sure." I leaned further into him then, on his shoulder near his neck. I looked out over the meadow behind us, watching the wind make waves in the grass, where the sun made their green into gold.

I couldn't describe how relaxed I was. I didn't care about anything at that moment. My suspicions were powerless over me. The only thing I was certain of was that I really, really cared about the person I was with now. Whoever he was, whoever he had been, I liked sitting here with him like this. I liked this person. And maybe that was all I needed to know.

I started stroking his hair then. I noticed he had it tied back again. "Do you mind," I asked him, "if I undo your hair?"

He stirred a bit beneath me. His reply was a bit cagey. "If you want to."

He leaned forward and I pulled out his looped tail of hair. I unwrapped the band around it and soon it was free to dance in the wind, streaming out towards the meadow. When the sun hit it, it turned nearly blond. That gold color reminded me of a scene long ago, when I saw a very similar wave of hair flickering before a landscape of fire.

I wasn't going to be able to put off my feelings any longer, I realized. My denial had a timer on it, and soon there would be no more seconds to count down.

Then I realized how hungry I was, and that in turn made me remember something else. I drew back away from Sef suddenly. "Oh, damn, I almost forgot!"

He looked puzzled, of course. "What?"

"I almost forgot, I wanted to be home before Cloud got up!" I made to disentangle myself from Sef, which was about the time I discovered how reluctant I was to do such a thing. Those last few moments we had were about as perfect as my life would allow. Did I really want to leave them so soon?

I toyed with the thought of inviting Sef back to my home, but my gut spoke out strongly against that. Instead, I unwrapped my legs from around him and got to my feet. The fallen magazine caught my eye then; I bent to retrieve it and handed it back to its owner. Sef took it absently.

"I'm sorry," I told him. "I don't want to leave you so suddenly..."

"No, it's all right. I understand."

I sighed, relieved, when something else I should've remembered came to mind. "Oh, something else... I probably should've told you this earlier, but my birthday's coming up. Next Friday, May third---"

Sef looked thoughtful. "I see. I should probably warn you I'm not good at gift giving, but I'm pretty good at remembering." He smiled a little there.

"It's all right," I laughed. "I just want you to come, so I can show you off. It's gonna be a sort of reunion; all my old friends'll be there. Nothing too big though; just a little something at my place. You remember where I live, don't you?"

He nodded, looking preoccupied.

I cast my eyes downward. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. What you get me doesn't matter; I just want you to be there." I looked up at him again. His eyes were distant. I had quite a few mixed feelings about asking him to come myself, but if I wanted this relationship to go anywhere, I had to bring Sef out of the shadows.

"No, don't worry about it," he assured me.

"Then you'll come?"

He seemed to hesitate. "You'll see me there. I'm not sure if I can stay, but I'll show."

I smiled, relieved again. "Thank you." And I gave him a little hug.

We parted with a lot of longing, and I suddenly discovered afterward that I had the energy to jog my way back home. I thought my heart was back there on Sef's sleeve, and in truth part of it was. But that was the way love worked when it first bloomed: you never wanted to be apart from that person, not even when you had to leave them.

I felt like I was running on air. I was in love and I wasn't there on the sidelines pining for it to happen. And my birthday was right around the corner. Life wasn't one big bloated adventure story straight out of a movie theater. It was back to its nice, normal little size.

When I got home, the first thing I did was tiptoe upstairs to see if Cloud was awake. He was---his door was open.

I took a peek inside and found a vacant, unmade bed. The windows in the room were open and the light from outside touched on something underneath the bed. In the shadow there I caught a glitzy shine. Wrapping paper?

Oh, I shouldn't have done it, but I couldn't hold myself back. I was too curious. No, I was going to open anything! I just wanted to see...what kind of wrapping paper he used! Yes. And what size the box was.

I crept over to his bed, squatted, lifted that corner of his comforter that was blocking half my view, and stole a look. Well, it was pretty wrapping paper: purple, with little festive balloons and party hats on it. A generic design---Cloud was always shy of gift giving, just the opposite of me---but the sparkle it had was a personal touch, something that he thought I'd like. I could tell by looking at it. Yikes, I knew him so well I could actually analyze his choice of gift wrap.

I didn't get to see much more though, because I heard a commotion in the kitchen, followed by a "Tif, you home?"

I was down the stairs like a thunderbolt, putting on a well-practiced innocent look. A part of me was really tickled at being kind of sneaky about things, but only because the situation was so lighthearted. I withheld a smile as he came stalking into the living room. "I thought I heard you come in." He held up a cup of something hot demonstratively. "Behold: I have created coffee." And he smirked playfully at his own jest.

I clapped for him. "And I'm very proud of you."

But then he came over to me and handed me the cup. His mirth faded away. "I'm sorry," he said after a time.

Huh? Sorry? "For what?"

He had looked away for a bit then, but now his eyes were back on me. "For last night. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I was just...in a bad mood. I was feeling frustrated."

I just stood there, holding the coffee. Well, he'd jumped the gun. I was kind of glad though, since whenever I have to do the apologizing to Cloud, it always came with a nagging inner feeling that he wouldn't really accept it. For what reason I felt that way, I wasn't sure. Having him do the icebreaking was another weight off my shoulders. I smiled feebly. "It's okay." Because you were always that way, Cloud. You were always moody, ever since we met again in Sector Seven in Midgar.

Back when Sephiroth had been messing with your mind, a whole eternity ago.

Cloud coaxed me to the kitchen then before I could elaborate on my train of thought. I pushed everything aside and asked him, "Well, did you try anything else while I was out?"

"Ahh...actually, I was hoping you'd give me a hand this time."

"Okay."

Heedless of my little life, the timer kept on ticking away. On my twenty-second birthday, something would end...and a whole new thing would begin.