Chapter III :: Uninvited
The wind whipped past, screeching as it fled through the shafts and grates of the airship. I gazed longingly at the ground below, wishing for something but not being entirely sure what it was. I didn't want to move forward, to keep enlarging the distance between me and whatever lay behind. I wanted Cid to stop the plane, so I could get off.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" I turned, startled, to find two large, amber eyes smiling up at me.
I shrugged, returned to the spinning scenery.
"Nothing." She sighed, and walked up next to me, leaning over the rail. The breeze played with her hair, sent it flying about her face as though she was floating in water. It made me want to tie it back, frightened of the image it sparked in me.
"Vincent and Yuffie are gone," she said slowly. "We're almost to Cosmo Canyon." Had I just heard a twinge of sadness? I glanced at her.
"Hmm." Her chin rested on the metal railing. From where I stood, I couldn't see her expression.
"You have no one to go back to. Where are you going to go?" The question chanted itself in my mind. Of course I'd thought about it before, yet now I felt the need to reply with words she wanted to hear. To comfort the sorrowful undertones in her voice.
"I…don't know. Somewhere. Eventually." It was insufficient; it wasn't enough. "And you, Tifa. Where are you going to live?"
The silence that followed worried me.
"I don't know either." Regardless of the depression that was so blatantly obvious, she forced a grin. "I'll think of something. I've been homeless before, after all." Young. Alone. Orphaned at fifteen. "Barret says I can live with him, in North Corel," she said, after a moment. "I don't really want to. I can't help feeling like I'm intruding on them." She closed her eyes. For one tense second, neither of us said anything. "You'll keep in contact, won't you?" I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. I closed it again, shook my head.
"I…I'll try."
She turned to me then, her whole body twisting to shove the aura of bleakness and misery and pain in my face, threatening to overwhelm me. I had never seen such a countenance on anyone before. Her hair had come out of the band that had held it, and she bent to pick up to the tie. Black locks dropped in front of her face, hiding the tears.
"I'll miss you." Once again: deficient, unsatisfactory. But she didn't protest, didn't say anything further—she could barely bring herself to look at me, compelling one more rueful smile before disappearing into the Control Room.
--
There was no moon that night. Even in the city, the chirping crickets and peepers in the forests surrounding Junon could be heard. Even as I lay on top of the blankets Marlene had provided, their rhythmic, incessant chattering reached me, just slightly comforting. They were a salvation, a periodic breaking of the ringing in my head. I couldn't sleep, for fear, for guilt. And because of the fever that made me sweat, shattering the insulation of sheets and comforters; for a moment I would be too hot to even breathe, and then, as a gentle breeze sifted through the open window in the living room, I would scramble under the bedclothes to keep from freezing to death. Apart from my scattered breathing, at two in the morning the rest of the house remained silent.
What would Tifa do when she saw me?
She won't "do" anything, I reminded myself. She's brain-dead.
Brain-dead.
I closed my eyes again, a futile attempt to block out the images that stormed in unwanted. Still-shots of her smiling, pictures of her speaking. The moments with her voice—how many times it had brought me back to the land of the living, back from my own unconscious. Every memory I had of her crushed my mind, suffocating it with the possibilities of what would never be again.
How many nights had she cried over me? How many minutes of every day had she thought of me, buried six feet under?
I shuddered, hugging myself. How many times had I been dead to her in all the years she had never heard from me? I realized, with a sudden, undeniable honesty, that I had put her through this circumstance more times than I could count with one hand. Since I had left her in Nibelheim, after the town was destroyed and I disappeared into the mountains; the day I met Aeris, leading Tifa to believe I had died in a mako reactor explosion, then again after I gave the Black Materia to Sephiroth… The list went on and on as the clock in the kitchen clicked. All throughout our lives I had played this detrimental tango with her, and she had put up with it, never once countering back, never once dissenting my deprecating behavior.
It was only a matter of time…
Why? Because…because that was simply Tifa; it was in her personality…
Frustrated that I—the one person who should have known the answer to that question—hadn't come up with anything more satisfying than "her personality," and unable to prevent the waves of sickness and blame from battering my conscience, I swung my legs out of my suffocating cocoon. The wood floor was cold beneath my feet, and a particularly rough wind strung gooseflesh along my arms. But I wasn't tired. I was more frightened than anything else, scared for once in my life of what I would witness tomorrow. I needed to see Tifa more than I actually wanted to. I didn't want to see what I had done.
Streams of pale yellow light filtered in through the kitchen window from the streetlamps outside, casting superficial shadows on corners and in crevices. Yet the whole house lay peaceful, relatively quiet. I padded past the table, and turned, glancing down the hallway. I hadn't been given a tour of the three-bedroom apartment, and I could only tell Barret's room by the snoring that grew louder with each step I took. Marlene's door had a small pink sign on it, declaring it with bright red letters as her own. Across from the bathroom was another door, closed. I stopped, standing with my nose nearly touching the dark wood. No sound came from within: it didn't take a genius to guess that the room was empty.
I reached out, tentatively grasping the doorknob, as if I expected to be electrocuted. The tiny springs made faint creaking noises as I turned it, and pushed the door open to face the darkness inside.
It was like walking into a tomb that hadn't been entered in several centuries, smelling faintly of dust just beginning to settle, and of stale perfume. My hand fumbled along the wall for a light switch, and in an instant the small area was illuminated, temporarily blinding me in the process.
It was, indeed, a bedroom. Meant to accommodate only one person, there was just enough space for a twin bed in the far corner, a dresser, and desk. Unlike the kitchen and parlor, there was a genuine Wutain rug under my bare feet, old and thick. I inhaled the forgotten scents, my brain making the connection quicker than I could respond to the stimuli.
Tifa…
It seemed almost sacrilegious to be in there, prying around her bedroom behind her back—even if she wouldn't know the difference; it didn't seem right, fair. But as I traced the edge of her perfume bottles, and scanned various piles of paper with her immaculate cursive on them, the recollections that returned with each touch were almost intoxicating, wonderful. Things, aspects I had never cared to notice before flooded my senses, pictures I had never taken time to consider in depth swarming in.
And I knew that if I didn't do something, regardless of what I saw tomorrow, those objects would remain unused and forgotten, left in this room to fade and decompose and eventually disappear—like the memories, they would dissipate until there was nothing left, no trace that anyone had ever lived there, that someone had even existed within these walls.
I had to do something.
I rounded the furniture until I made it to the bed. The bed that had hardly ever been used, if at all, before Tifa became too ill even to take care of herself… The bed where she had supposedly witness my ghost, along with Aeris, and with whoever dead decided to visit her in the small hours of the morning. The bed from which the nightmares had sprung, those that would eventually drive her to the edge.
Brain-dead.
I collapsed onto the cushions, exhausted. Despite its unpleasant reputation, the mattress and bedclothes made for surprisingly—exceedingly—comfortable padding. I let myself fall back, and sank gently as I stared up at the ceiling.
Tifa had slept in this bed.
When she was still sleeping, of course.
It was outrageously hot in that stuffy room, the door having stayed firmly closed for most of the time since Tifa had left; I flipped onto my stomach, to squander the molecules of heat that had attached themselves to my clothing. I buried my face in her pillow, breathing in her fragrance. The feeling it gave was overpowering, irresistible, an awareness of cleanness, of delicacy and beauty. Wholly feminine. I could feel my heart beating under my weight, pounding against the metal springs and cotton sheets. A foreign, rare flora—that was what she smelled like. Like something distant, faraway, unreachable, yet completely familiar, almost intrinsic. I closed my eyes, letting the aromas lift into my brain, taking me away…
I dunno…couldn't it be considered stalking? Snooping in someone's bedroom…creepy (even if it is Cloud). Either way, I managed to avoid the actual "reunion" for another chapter. Don't you just love the suspense? Once again, please read and review. Domo arigato Raine