AN: Well, this could or could not be the last "chapter" chapter. I have an epilogue planned, which should tie up any loose ends I have. (sobs) I can't believe it's ending. I've rather enjoyed writing this crazy little story. Thanks to you who have been loyal. Just remember, leave a review for the epilogue at least, even if all it says is "hi". I got rather poetic in this chapter, I apologize in advance.

Chapter 22 – Opus de Valentine et Strife

His world was filled with fractured mirrors. No matter where he turned, he saw fragments of himself, laughing, crying, smiling, glaring... a kaleidoscope of faces that caused him great unease.

Cloud was lost again. But he knew what he was looking for. He knew what hope was.

"Yuffie! Where are you?!" he shouted, causing the mirrors to vibrate and shake, and he marveled for a moment at the strength of his cry.

She's here, I know she is. I have to find her, I have to protect her.

The faces were numerous shapes and sizes. Some were strangers, like the beautiful brown haired woman on his right, and older man with silver hair and green eyes at his lower left. And some were familiar. Like Aeris, who was smiling at him, and Yuffie, who had a worried and frantic look on her face. Then his eyes fell on Tifa's face, whose mouth was open like she was shouting, the ever present tears streaming down her face.

As he moved in this cell of glass, the faces fractured themselves, pieces of each creating new faces. Crimson eyes overlapped the gentle face that he knew was his mother, and green ones overtook the pale thin and serious face of Vincent. Blond hair exchanged with black, brown with red, like a child's drawing thrown into a lake.

There were no more images now, only colors, like stained glass.

"Cloud, I'm sorry!"

He never told Tifa that he'd forgiven her. That any malice in him was reserved for Jenova, for anything that threatened to harm his hope. A hope that he wanted to find.

He ran at the glass, shattering it into oblivion. He didn't feel any splinters, and if he did, he wouldn't have cared. He had to tell her. She was calling him.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...

He kept running, through darkness, through light, through shadow... each compartments of his own mind. The ground was unsteady, if it was a ground at all. But he ran, so hard until something stopped him.

It was a cliff. Some bottomless void hidden in the back of his brain. That which scared him the most about himself.

And he was going to jump.

He backed up a few steps, and tightened his fists. Then he ran at it, until he could feel that strange weightless sensation... for he was falling. But for once, he was not lost. He was giddy in his sense of purpose, though a purpose he had never consider. He wasn't fighting evil...

He was surrendering to it.

"Come out!" he shouted as he fell, "Give them back!"

I thought you'd never ask.

"I don't want to be the hero!" he continued shouting, as if he were the last man on earth, "I just want them back!"

He jerked for a moment, and realized he was no longer falling, but suspended in the void. There was a hand; he could see it, holding desperately onto his own. A woman's hand slightly gnarled with whitish scars.

His eyes traveled up the arm, to the face...

It was Tifa. And she was smiling at him.

"I'm so sorry Cloud," she whispered, pulling him into a world of colors that didn't stay in one hue for long. He shook his head.

"No, don't worry," he replied, eyes looking down at his feet, "I forgive you. I forgive you, Tifa." She hugged him, crushing him with her relief. The air held a yellow pigment, sunny like high noon.

"Then you can find her," she whispered in his ear, "For you are fully freed of your regret." He frowned, thinking for a moment. The yellow darkened to amber, a cold warmth locked into a haze the enveloped them.

Then you aren't Tifa at all... you're like Aeris. Are you my regret?

"Thank you for letting go," he breathed, giving her a squeeze before separating, "It made it easier to let you go." She smiled and nudged him. Amber deepened to crimson, like wine and stolen berries from the near forgotten summer days. It draped around them like silk, blowing freely in a breeze.

"Go," she said cheerfully, "Find her."

And he began running again, catching one last glimpse of her, as she waved her goodbye to him. She was surrounded by the brightest violet he had ever seen, electrifying his mental image to go faster, to run harder... And she faded into it, like an indigo memory.

My mind is a cluster of metaphors. Damn mess, but I see that now. I'm coming Yuffie, I'm coming...

You think I'd make it that easy?

"Stop it! I'm not listening to you anymore!" he shouted, passing through a substance that looked like water. It slowed him, though he could not feel it. He flailed his limbs, fighting it with every step.

You still think that I'm alien, foreign to you humans. That I was something that fell to this planet, an evil bent on your destruction?

"Jenova?" he asked, letting his mind slow down, and what appeared to be his body speed up. He heard the echo of a laugh; a hollow sound that made him wish he could shiver.

I appear as you want me to appear. You thought I would be a monster, I was a monster.

An image of Jenova as he knew it appeared in the rippling matter before him. The tenacled monster shimmering in the waves, looking the perfect part in his mind.

I can be a woman, a man, your lover, your enemy... I am what you want to see.

The beautiful woman he didn't recognize appeared and faded, transforming into Vincent. His usual stern expression lifted into a smile, and he could see Yuffie...

But before he could reach out to her, he saw Sephiroth.

This makes it easier for you to hate me, doesn't it?

"I have to find her!" he exclaimed, struggling to run. He realized that he wasn't moving forward, but staying in place. He was caught on something, it appeared he had not let go of everything yet.

You are an unusual being, Cloud Strife. Full of contradictions and misgivings. Passionate and apathetic. Aggressive and gentle. And so close to being whole...

"Where is she?" he hissed, slowing down a little, "Get out of my way!"

Not until you admit it. Not until you see. Tell me who I am.

"What?" he replied, stopping all his movements. The figure that looked like Sephiroth leaned forward, with a snarl in its lip. Taunting him. Provoking him.

'...I'm too young to die...'

'I'm so sorry, Cloud'

'You must cleanse yourself of the evil inside you'

'You are not evil, Cloud. Nor are you perfect, just as I was in life'

'I'm here, Cloud. You don't have to find me anymore.'

"You are something I no longer fear," he replied, seeing a look of surprise in the eerie green eyes, "You have no power over me."

The image shattered, just like the mirrors, and he could move now. He wasn't running now to search, he wasn't running to flee. He had found. He had found her.

Their fingers brushed before they were consumed in the brightest light he had ever seen, blinding him in the process. He closed his eyes, and began to feel. Her hair tangled in his fingers, her face on his chest. His other arm clasped around her shoulders, which were shaking uncontrollably.

"Yuffie," he whispered, relieved that he could feel once again, "I think I love you."

Earlier...

"Tifa!" he shouted, loosening his grip on Audrey enough that she launched out of his arms. He ran after her, ran towards Tifa... he didn't want to waste any moments. His very life was slipping away from him, and he'd be damned to let that happen again.

I said I would save you, Tifa. I meant it.

The glow around Audrey grew brighter as she got closer to Tifa's crumpled form. An energy that he'd only seen from materia gathered around her small form. Then she turned back for a moment to look at him.

Her eyes were a glowing violet, so different from what he knew. They were almost frightening.

"See," she whispered, a whisper that echoed in his mind, "See what is real."

There was no monster. They had been fighting an illusion. The real battle was not on the ground, but somewhere else, somewhere more real than the senses lead them to believe.

Jenova wasn't real at all. Not in the sense they were.

He had almost reached her; he couldn't have been as far away as he thought, as it seemed to him. A few feet had become miles and she was slipping, slipping into a darkness that overtook the ground.

"Hurry!" Audrey's whisper flooded his senses, he had lost touch and smell, the feel of the ground and the stench of gun smoke had faded into the sight and sound. There was laughter, there was his pulse, and there was the forgotten sound of a metal hand he had lost some time ago.

His sight was so startlingly clear now, like he'd never really looked at anything before.

A girl, with the pale hair of a Cetra and the electrifying blue eyes of a human stood over the crumpled form of a younger boy. His eyes were popped wide open, revealing the same startling blue. His light clothes were marred in ugly splotches of red, and she held a piece of glass with trembling fingers, covered with its own crimson...

She cried, lifting her head to the sky, her body shaking with the exertion in her voice.

'Gaia, may we all live to know such pain!'

Once uttered, her tremors stopped, and she clasped her hand to her mouth, eyes wide with terror. For a star was falling, a bright and beautiful streak in the sky...

He couldn't see her now, and he feared the darkness may have taken her. Then he saw a warm indigo light, just to his left guiding him to a door, hanging in the middle of nowhere.

As he approached it, much to his horror, his left hand was once again a claw. He gripped the rusted knob of the door with this appendage, hearing the screech of metal against metal.

I was born of the tears of spite. I was the curse uttered from faded innocence.

"Tifa!" he called, peeking his head into a room suffused with sounds. It was like a hundred different orchestras were playing at once, but with different music. Somehow it sounded right; a loud and complicated polyphony. It seemed alive, like it would carry him across an ocean of stars. His sight hadn't quite caught up to his ears, and we he focused, he only saw one thing.

A chair, with a woman seated in it, her back facing him. Her long brown hair flowed down it, allowing him to identify her.

"Tifa!" he called to her, as he crossed the room to meet her. She turned her head to face him, and he anticipated those warm burgundy eyes of hers; he imagined the surprise they would hold.

But they were green, an impossible green a person only finds after the Winter ends, when the Spring first shows her face.

You have eluded me, Vincent Valentine. Congratulations, your soul is at peace.

"Where is Tifa?" he demanded, a tone that he was beginning to dislike from his voice.

You can't possibly have it all, can you? Isn't redemption enough?

"No," he replied, grinding the fingers of his claw into his palm, "It cannot be enough. I want hers too."

The sounds of stringed instruments had taken dominance over the sound, fretting and plucking away with anxious tones. Sounds that would wear the nerves of any decent person, and drive them to madness.

I will not let her fade. I failed once, I will not fail again.

"Vincent, I'm sorry," her whisper permeated past, quieting the chaotic music, "I wanted to be there, to find you after this was all over. I wanted to live, because I wanted to live for you. I wanted to live for the children. I even wanted to live for Cloud, so I could see him at peace."

Foolish thoughts from a foolish girl. She is redeemed, but not worthy to live such a life.

"Who are you to choose?" he choked out, grasping the shoulders of the figure tightly, "What right have you?" She smirked, letting her eyes fade to burgundy.

I am how you want to see me. I am pain. I am judgment. I am the Messenger of Gaia.

"But what does that mean?" he added with a shake to the figure, despite its growing resemblance to Tifa, "Where did you come from? Why are you here?"

Every light has a dark.

The bloodied shard of glass fell from the girl's hand. She fell on her knees, and wept over her brother's body.

If it is in this planet, Gaia, that you see good, then I am its antithesis.

The shadow of a woman fell over the girl; block the sun from her view. The girl looked up, staring in awe at the woman before her.

But we are not separate, just like your mind.

The woman held out her hand, and the girl slowly took it.

'Come child, I will grant your request.'

Are you certain this is what you need?

It was Tifa's face, asking him, her eyes pleading with him. That gentle glow that they emanated when she whispered, when was close to him.

"You may not see it," he whispered, lulling the music to a gentle hum, "but she is infused with life. Even after so much sorrow." She smiled, a warm and full smile, one that she'd dazzled people with for years.

"Thank you, Vincent," Tifa whispered, as the room around them fell away, into silence and darkness.

And they were falling, inches apart, grasping for each other.

Will you fall with me?

Will you live for me?

No, I will live with you.

Then I will fall for you.

"...Vincent? Is Audrey safe?"

"Yes, she's safe."

"And you?"

"Still falling."

AN: I told you Audrey was special. And the violet eyes thingy was a little joke, sorta. I'll let you figure out where you've seen that before. She's narrarating the epilogue, so her oddness will be explained a little. Gosh, I hope I didn't get too mushy... I'm afraid of that. Oh well, I'll just have to live with that.

Theme songs: Gravity of Love Enigma, Blue Vast, The Conception ATLUS (Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Soundtrack), and Lateralus Tool