Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy VII, or Vincent, or Tifa, or any of the other Final Fantasy VII characters. Just inserting them into the machine of my imagination and watching what pops out.

Destination: The Bank to Say Goodbye

by: thelittletree

(I'm sorry this chapter took so long to write. My muse for this poor little fic has been waning, right at the end. But I've only got the epilogue to finish and then I'm done! Thanks for reading and for reviews, everyone! I know this fic doesn't really stand up to some of the other stuff I've done, but it was something to do.)

"My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges, and sweet's the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges." -- Dorothy Parker

Cloud was gone. Gone, with his things, on his chocobo, without another word to anyone. It was the first piece of news Tifa heard, shortly after waking, in a brief visit from Barret and Yuffie. The second was from a nurse who told her that little Jordon had made it safely to Kalm and in a day he would be waiting to be taken home.

The third piece of news was Vincent himself, returning from his unexpected hunt. Recently out of the shower and coming to see how she was, and probably more than ready to leave North Corel as soon as she was discharged from the hospital.

But as he entered, turning to close the door behind him, Tifa saw the slump of his shoulders and glimpsed his weary, distancing expression. And she resigned herself back into her pillow, more than anything wanting this to be all behind them, wanting a return to the comfortable, loving routine of day to day life. Vincent, she thought despondently, was never going to forget this. Independent and smart, she'd led him to believe after all this time, but not really when it came to the deepest parts of her heart where unclosed doors and unlocked windows still let foolish hopes in. Should've known closure wasn't something you could force, with too little time and conversation, into a cracked vessel.

Should've believed Vincent from the start. But she was stubborn, too, and sometimes she thought he would do anything to make her happy. Guilty and responsible, no matter what Vincent said, for Cloud's happiness, if only because Cloud believed it to be so -- and she wondered, feeling as if her stomach had turned into a clenched fist, whether Vincent might finally be getting tired of being vulnerable to her whims.

He didn't meet her eyes as he came to the bed, seemingly content with merely studying her form beneath the blanket as if that could tell him how the restitching had gone. And she sighed quietly to herself, holding back the impulse to get unreasonably angry. Her fault, not his, she knew, and this was going to have to be allowed to play out between them.

She stared at him until he finally met her eyes, his expression unchanged. And she smiled tightly, hoping she could break through the guarded fortress his mind had become.

"Well, you told me so, didn't you?"

He glanced away, across the room, leaving her first offer at apology behind him. "It doesn't matter."

Bullshit, it didn't matter. Far beneath the surface, brooding behind his walls, and Tifa resigned herself to a long, tugging fight, without any clear direction for fishing his words out. With another sigh, she simply began a ritual of small talk, waiting for him to make the next move.

"They transferred Jordan to the hospital in Kalm this morning. We can take him home tomorrow."

"Mm."

"And they're going to let me out of here after lunch. If Cid's still willing to help us, we can be back home in time for supper."

He made no reply. She looked at her hands. And shook her head. It was no good. She didn't have the leisure of patience this morning.

"So, tell me, are you very angry?"

His gaze felt like storm, ready for heavy rain. And they could've been having breakfast in Kalm right now, sipping tea and hospital orange juice and basking in their tightly woven universe. Everything else simply a nightmare they had left behind them.

A nightmare deliberately forgotten, she knew, until the hours when Vincent slept and she lay awake in a turmoil of thoughts that had no proper ending.

"Not anymore. It's over."

She glanced up to meet weary, unresponsive eyes, terrified for a moment that he meant what it sounded like he meant. "It's over?" She could never be as unaffected as him, and she cursed the hushed breath her voice had become.

He turned his gaze away and she saw the lines around his mouth tighten, the corners of his mouth twitching into a tiny frown.

"I won't make excuses, you knew my feelings."

She was ready to say something, anything. A real apology, a promise to be different, a plea…

But he continued.

"I let my anger take the opportunity; it was a dangerous loss of control. I could have seriously injured him."

Tifa had already spent a desperate moment trying to follow the conversation, not sure what he was saying, when she realized that when she'd asked him if he was angry, he'd immediately inferred 'at Cloud'.

Involved in two completely separate fights, and she'd hardly thought about his struggle with Cloud since it had happened. Surprised, for a moment, that he'd resorted to violence, but in the end she'd resolved it in her mind as an entirely predictable reaction, trying to push Cloud back over the line he'd crossed. "Vincent…"

"I may not have stopped at injuring him."

But he was lost in self-damnation, and she was suddenly wondering how long it had been since he'd transformed, not to hunt, but out of rage. A long, long time, she guessed, before Lily and routines and a job where monsters were little more than tools to kill other monsters.

And she had a feeling he was suddenly re-evaluating himself against standards he would never be able to meet. No, he would never be like other men again. He would never be free of hunting. And, because of that, she would never be entirely free from danger, and neither would Jordan. There was a paradox in him, she saw now, never really acknowledged before: the human and the altered other. The one who could live this life, and the one he kept a secret because he wanted to be with her.

The Vincent who loved her, and the Vincent who, though he denied it at every corner, believed somewhere inside that he was deceiving himself.

And she knew the distance in his eyes was not because of her. He could forgive her anything. It was because he was starting to believe he was going to have to go, and, perhaps for sanity's sake, had detached himself from emotion.

"Vincent…" She held out her hand to him, needing to bridge the gap before he drifted further. "Sit down."

The first spark in his eyes, the first real twitch of something breaking for a moment through the wall, and she almost thought he would listen to her. But then it faded, and she nearly expected him to take a step backwards.

"Who am I," he began quietly, "to talk about protecting you from Cloud. He stopped to watch me hunt yesterday, possibly thinking about your safety. I've been a fool to convince myself that the routines are enough."

And she knew this had gotten well out of proportion, to not trust himself suddenly after almost two years. It was one extreme or the other: to forget and deny everything for some peace and happiness, or to accept it all and damn himself. He had probably been battling with this a long time. It was time to face it down, as far as it would go, if not completely out of his life.

"Vincent, they've been enough so far. And it's not like I don't know that you change into Chaos and the others to hunt monsters. I made a choice with you, I thought you made the same choice."

This seemed to touch something in him and she saw the movement at his throat as he swallowed. "I made a selfish choice," he admitted quickly.

"No, you didn't," she asserted firmly, wondering how in the world she was going to follow him if he decided to turn and leave the room. "It was a choice to love me and make me happy. That wasn't selfish. What you really wanted was for things to stay the way they were, but you changed that for me."

He made no move to leave, or to reply. And, deciding to take it as encouragement, she continued. This wasn't a bluff, she knew. He would go, and maybe forever, unless she could pull a higher hand. And she knew she could -- if he would let himself listen.

"So, what do you want to do? Leave me to protect me, like you almost left Lily?"

She felt herself starting to bubble up with tears, angry and afraid and wishing her words were solid objects she could use to knock him back into himself. So long, and so stable, she'd never imagined it would come back down to this -- back to the Vincent he'd been when he'd been so cautious about letting her in.

"Leave me like Cloud left me, to find yourself? Leave me to raise Jordan alone?"

There was something startled and wary in his eyes for a moment. Oh yes, the idea of leaving her alone with all of the responsibility, forgetting his own responsibility for the choice he had made. This was reality, this was the decision in front of him. Very little in the world was concretely black or white, when everything good had an inevitable bit of bad in it. And whatever he chose now would have to be the good with the bad he could accept and live with, and not regret.

And she continued, resolved not to let him leave with any kind of delusion that he was doing the right thing.

"You didn't hurt Cloud. You could've let Chaos rip him into tiny pieces, but you didn't. That was a choice, wasn't it? To protect him?"

His expression was faltering, and she couldn't help the stab of victorious satisfaction she felt at being able to get through to him. "I haven't been that angry in a long time," he confessed softly. "If I'd had the power then, Hojo would've died in that basement…"

"But you stopped yourself. And what's to say you'll ever be angry like that again? We've fought, we've been angry at each other, and you don't transform. I don't understand how this risk is worth throwing everything away?"

He closed his eyes and turned his head a little, and she wiped at forming tears. He knew, now, what the naked options were and she waited with her heart beating in her throat for him to choose. Thought she knew what he would choose, what he wanted to choose, what he had to choose…

"I'm sorry, Tifa."

And she sat up, ignoring the fiery stitches, ignoring the ache in her head, ignoring everything about the present in return for the future. "Vincent, please…"

But he didn't leave. His expression was finally open, apologetic and remorseful as he stepped nearer and sat in the chair by the bed. Took her hand with an uncharacteristic significance and met her eyes resolutely. "I wouldn't leave you." And then, quieter. "I wouldn't leave you like that."

And she took a sudden breath, not sure when she'd stopped breathing. Lay back on the pillow and didn't say anything right away. Just held his hand and let him rememorize the feel of her fingers. And, after what might've been a minute, she smiled a little at him, still not entirely sure where she stood between anger and relief. "We both get caught between these decisions, don't we? Nothing's completely right or completely wrong, so we're never sure exactly which way to go."

And Vincent's lips twitched a little, a shadow of his usual smirk. "To scorch ourselves and others by burning bridges is worse by far than letting the fire burn our own hand."

Tifa raised an eyebrow at something so apt. "Is that a quote?"

"From somewhere. I don't remember."

She smiled and squeezed his hand. He was forgiven, and she wondered if he might finally let her into the parts of himself he kept closed off. Not that it would really change the way she felt about him, one way or the other. "I love you," she told him. "I love everything about you."

He smiled gently, maybe gratefully. And, when a silent moment passed, she allowed herself an expectant expression. And his smile widened, amused.

"Yes, I love you, too."

And she knew he did, knew whatever had passed between them, between herself and Cloud, between the past and the future, had been transformed into a signpost, a milestone, a moment when one more silence had become a point of understanding. He loved her, they had a son, their personal histories weren't something that could be helped, but they could be accepted and put behind them and built on.

And now it was time, past time she knew, to push off from the banks and simply wave farewell. It was all there was left to do here.