Chapter XIII :: Désespoir, Part II

I couldn't sleep. My nervousness made me jittery, unable to keep still. Barret had noticed it before, at dinner, and I was just beginning to acknowledge it now. I lay on the couch in my friend's living room, staring up at the ceiling and the oblong water stain, thinking of my comatose best friend and concentrating on keeping my body from shaking itself onto the floor. The reflections from the window cast smooth, liquid images on the walls, as the rain came down and battered the apartment in sheets. The lightening flashed across the house, and all my mind could occupy itself with was the thought of Tifa, alone in the private world of her unconsciousness, a world I had invaded, upsetting over the fact that I was not dead.

She hadn't known that I was alive. But of course—how could she have ever figured it out by herself? I recalled the expression that had taken control of her entire form, as my hand had rested itself on her frigid shoulder, as she felt the touch of another person's skin on her own; a complete physical representation of shock, of the disbelief that came when something so obvious there was no way anyone could have not missed it was revealed. And as she no doubt hated herself for not realizing it, I hated myself for not telling her.

The expression flashed in my mind again. The misery made my chest ache with an invisible injury. And it wasn't as though she had recovered from the surprise, either—I had left her there, albeit unwillingly, to deal with her emotions by herself regardless of whether or not she was able to handle them. The guilt of it was more than that of when I'd come back, realizing her condition; the guilt that I had done it again, abandoned her to herself when, once more, it was so clear she wouldn't be able to handle it—if she hadn't a mere four months before, why was now any different?

Something was unsettled, and there was no way I was ever going to risk falling asleep when all Tifa had to do was simply stop breathing, stop caring again…

Before my mind had a chance to rationalize what my body was doing, I had dressed myself, and shut the front door gently behind me. The rain was coming in torrents upon the city, and the sound of the water slapping against the pavement and concrete was much louder without the stone walls to muffle the noise. I hesitated for just a moment, debating with myself on whether to go back in and retrieve an umbrella—I would be venturing out into the weather with or without it as it was. But I had risked an escape without waking any other of the apartment's inhabitants, and I couldn't risk it again. Not when my mission had become so imperative. I hugged my arms to my chest, and stepped out into the storm. The wind blew at my face, and I could feel the city's foundation shaking beneath my boots as each bout of thunder passed. Two blocks down the power had gone out, and without the artificial light to aid me, I was forced to rely on my memory—six weeks of walking the same sidewalks and turning the same corners—and the brief bursts of lightening that would illuminate the entire block, as I navigated my way to the hospital.

In the lobby on the comatose floor, the receptionist desk was closed, it's lamp off and the paper usually adorning the countertop shuffled neatly away. I knew without needing to check that there was no possible way for me to let myself in—visiting hours had been over since five; especially when the switch controlling the lock was under the desk. So here I was, in a mental hospital in the middle of the night, acting purely on gut instinct.

Despite the hour, the lights in the foyer, though tuned down immensely from their original blinding hue, still provided enough light to direct me towards the chairs I wasn't sure anyone ever used; I sat myself down across from the elevator, next to the door barricading me from the insanity. I occupied myself, in the minutes that strolled by, with desperately searching for any form of rationale for my impulsive decision—if I hadn't expected anyone to be here to welcome me, and if I hadn't expected everything to be just as it should be, then what had I expected to find compelling myself out in the driving rain to come here?

My own solutions came up short, and did absolutely nothing to quell the feathers in my lungs.

It was the creaking of metal hinges that brought my attention from the panel flooring and the image of Tifa's face—Catherie stopped just as she began letting the door fall closed behind her, staring at me in utter surprise.

"Cloud…?" she said, when she had managed to find her voice. Her eyes narrowed; the door closed softly at her back, and the silence of the hospital beyond died away. "What are you doing here?"

I stood up. "I have to see her. Catherie, you have to let me in."

"Cloud," she hissed, "it's one in the morning. Have you lost your mind?!" I would have laughed at the statement, by the sheer irony of it, in any other circumstance, had it not been for the insects gnawing at my nerves, and the honest possibility of the proposition.

"Catherie, it's very important!" She held her hands up, in an attempt to block my outrageous plea. "Tifa's going to die! If you don't let me in she'll die! You have to let me see her!" Arms crossed, she shot me a look.

"If she's going to die," she retorted sorely, "how is 'seeing' her going to help any? She's in a coma, for God's sake!" She looked exhausted—I didn't doubt that she was—and my presence surely wasn't helping. She closed her eyes, and couldn't hide the disappointment when she realized that I really was there as she opened them again, and that I wasn't going away.

"I know. I know." I paused, and dropped the volume of my voice just so. "Please, Cath, even if you never let me see her again, even if you never let me step foot in another hospital for the rest of my life, please. I just need to be with her. That's all I'm asking. She's my best friend. I need to see if she's all right." Here eyes scanned me, hunting for what exactly I couldn't be sure. When nothing from the ordinary besides my existence presenting itself, she sighed, and shook her head.

"You know I could lose my job for this."

My smile was curt. "Thank you." Her lips pursed, and she brought out her keys.

"Yeah, yeah." She moved quickly enough, though tired, and unlocked the door. Yet as I moved to enter, she sidestepped in front of me, blocking the way with her body and a dark, frustrated glare. "Five minutes, got it? That's it. I'll come and get you when the times up." I nodded, and couldn't withhold a slight shiver at the repressed annoyance in her eyes. The wave of cold hitting me as I peered into the deserted rec room caused another shudder, as I made my way down the hall. Tifa's room was almost completely black, with only a small window above the bed, and I fumbled through the darkness for the chair by the bed, the claps of lightening brightening the room only for the briefest seconds; I felt as though I were intruding—Tifa could easily passed off as sleeping, as if by simply touching her, by breaking the silent dark, she would awaken…

I took her hand in mine, and shivered from the cold.

The sky opened up above me, and the cement and the clouds dissipated. The walls fell away, and the small town of Nibelheim sprouted about me. I was once again at the entrance to the town, and could see, vaguely, from my position a solitary, miniscule figure sitting on the well. Storms clouds rolled lazily across the night sky, and the ground smelled wet and cold. I wondered, with a sense of confusion, how long Tifa had been there—had she actually sat there through the storm?

Her eyes remained fixed on the ground as I moved towards her; I clambered up beside her on the well, and somehow didn't need to see to know that her hair, flat and dark and thick, was soaked, as were her clothes, the moisture just beginning to evaporate from her arms; she watched the stones with a troubled composure without uttering a single word.

"How long have you been sitting out here?"

"Since you left."

An icy breeze filtered across the cobbles, usual for a town built at the base of a mountain range, an unpleasant chill any native eventually learned to tolerate. The wind shuffled the clouds, and the midnight sky was littered with stars, all twinkling down without a care of what transpired below, as though this were reality, and the world I had left merely a dream.

"Aren't you tired?"

"I haven't slept well for a while." She shrugged again, with the same quiet resistance. "I've grown used to it."

"I know." Her eyes darted on me for the briefest of seconds. "Barret told me, that you hadn't been sleeping before…you came here." I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase it, but she nodded in response, catching my drift and going with it. "So you really want to be here."

She caught my abrupt surprise with a curt laugh. "Not as much as I thought I did." Pause. "A lot of what I thought…doesn't really hold anymore. I thought you were dead."

"I didn't know I had mattered that much to you…"

For a second as she allowed the silence in before replying, nearly led me to believe I had said something wrong. The corners of her lips upturned in a nearly invisible rueful smile, a levity that was barely there, utter irony. "You're my best friend. Of course you matter to me." Almost akin to a sixth sense, I knew by instinct she was keeping something from me, a detail, significant or unimportant I had no idea, and although I knew it couldn't have been healthy for either of us, I didn't question her.

"Enough to give up on life completely?"

Her breath caught.

"I did say before…it was a lot of things. You know. Being alone, that sort of thing…" She rubbed at her face, but there were no apparent tears for me to see. "You were just the last straw. The closest person I had…gone. I said I had thought about this before, it was just a matter of, you know, finding an excuse."

…finding an excuse… My mind held on to the words, and I smiled at her.

"Do you still feel that way now?"

Her breath was soft. "I don't know what I feel anymore." And so was the beginning of the end: "I used to think that keeping secrets from people, not letting everyone see who I really was, was good. I don't remember when I started thinking that it was a necessity, that I wouldn't survive if I let myself become so vulnerable." She paused; the entirety of this world was silent. "It could have been in Midgar. I was used to having people know who I was—but then I lost everything, after Nibelheim. You could get lost in a city like Midgar. No one knew who I was, and no one cared. I figured out that I could live with keeping secrets. Lots of secrets." I could tell only through sideways glances that her eyes had lost focus. For a moment, I couldn't bring myself to say anything to disturb her reverie, which appeared more beneficial than not.

"It's not healthy, you know. To keep everything in," I said carefully.

She snorted, with more humor than before. "Apparently not."

"You…know me pretty well, don't you?" She glanced at me, and, after a second of realizing she had no idea where I was getting at, nodded suspiciously. "That's how you were able to help me. In the Lifestream."

"I guess…why?"

"It's just…here we are, in the same predicament, only with the roles reversed." I closed my eyes, blinked. "And I don't have the slightest clue who you are. Hell, I didn't even know you were depressed until I got to Junon and Barret told me about it." I could feel the anger rising up through my chest, tickling my lungs with gentle, irritating flippancy. Anger with things I couldn't control, and with the things I could have but never took the time nor the energy to change. "I want to be able to say I know you. I want to know you better than anyone else, know more about you than anyone else. Tell me something I don't know about you—your deepest darkest secret."

The smile that appeared from my request wasn't at all strong, existing not because it was forced but because there was no possible way she would comply. Her eyes remained struck on the endless expanse above us, and she shrugged, lightly, still grinning. "I can't tell you that," she said quietly. "It's a secret." She paused. "Maybe one day. When I'm less of a coward."

…one day…

"I don't know if I can go back, Cloud. Not after all this time." While she was smiling, and while the smile was genuine, there was something in those upturned lips that was so distressing, something so irrepressibly sad about the way she was gazing at me now. "You say you don't know that much about me—no more than anyone else, but…you still understand me, and you still care. That's important. I guess when Barret told me about the phone call, I felt like…like the one person I cared about the most, the one I worried about the most, the one who understood me the most, was gone—how is Barret, anyway? And Marlene?" I shook my head in disbelief.

"Worried about you. Marlene barely knows what happened. Everyone misses you. We all miss you."

She swallowed. "They're not mad at me?"

"Mad? Why would they be mad? Tifa, not even the doctors think you're going to live. None of them know what's going on—for the record, I'm the only one who knows about all this..." I gestured, to the houses, to the mountains, to the stars above us.

"Oh." There was a certain lack of something, a lack of energy, as she spoke, and it merely proceeded to frustrate me further when she did not continue with anything else that would have helped me. "You've been in a coma for four months…almost five. I came to Junon a couple of weeks ago." I stared, taking her in as if this might very well have been the last I ever saw of her. The breeze sent strands of intertwining skeins flitting across her face, and every so often she would brush them away, without putting mind to the action. Her thin hands, pallid in the moonlight, glowed dimly as they lay on her lap, fidgeting for a moment, then falling still. She refused to look at me, now, as though it would disrupt the quiet.

She was a beautiful woman, Tifa.

"Please come back." She blew air through her nose, without spite; she allowed the stillness to deepen in her limbs. "I'm right here, sitting right next to you. You look like you're sleeping, Tif, and I'm holding your hand." She stole a glimpse at her hand, palm-upwards towards the night sky. "Just open your eyes, Tifa. Open them and see."

Tifa closed her eyes. "I can't."

"Stop saying that. I know you can."

She shook her head. "I can't. I've forgotten—I don't know how I got here in the first place." We both paused.

"By wishing," I said, slowly. "You gave up everything to come here, Tif, every last thing. You wanted this that much. You have…to want going back just as much. You want to see Barret, and Marlene…and me." She clutched her forearms, tilting her head slightly to glimpse at me. "You want your life back?"

"Yes." She began to bite her lip, then stopped, grimacing. "What if…what if you're not there?"

"I am." I couldn't defend myself until she witnessed it for herself—for once, now, here was a promise, important in all of its honesty, that I could keep. "You can't fake this, Tifa. You have to want this more than anything." Pause. "You have to trust me." Her sideways glance suggested skepticism.

"You promise?"

I smiled, and promised, wholly.

And then, inhaling deeply air that didn't exist, she closed her eyes.

--

The first thing she notices is the quiet; it is not an absolute silence, not like the gentle soundlessness she has grown used to, in a place she cannot remember living. There is no light to see by, a blackness devoid of stars or sky, and, abruptly, without the sun to warm her, it is remarkably cold. She can feel her flesh rippling eagerly in the chill, despite the sheets cloaking her. She feels thin, and dangerously breakable. This quiet, the busy and productive cacophony by day muffled by darkness and sleep, begins to frighten her.

Where is she?

The mattress beneath her quivers, gently, and she freezes in fear, worried further by the lack of response her weakened muscles provide—a pressure, round and hardly there, presses itself against her leg, her thigh; it takes a moment, and then settles with a muted sigh. She glances in panic around at the room—she realizes now that it is a room, too cold and too surly with frigid organization to be a bedroom—searching for a reflection that might give some clue, some hint as to what, or who, is resting on the bed beside her. With no such luck, she shifts her weight, and, slowly sliding her atrophied arms to prop herself up, picking her head up from the pillow. For a second she does not see anything at all, and then the pain comes, searing across the black and forcing her back down into the bedclothes. The darkness swirls and dances above her, mocking violently, and any remaining thoughts evaporate from her mind.

She blinks, and waits for the movements to recede before giving another attempt, instead bringing her hand down, grazing the thin, grey sheets, and landing at last, without any apparent sting, on…hair.

Why is the feel of another person such a shock—why is this sensation so unfamiliar? But it was a comfort, a soft, unobtrusive assurance. Someone else is there with her, sleeping beside her. She finds herself smiling; she draws her hand back, running her fingers down to the scalp, though too nervous to venture further, to the hairline, the brow—too hesitant to discover the face beneath those locks. She wishes she could tell from the length and the cut of it who it belongs to. It is short, and cropped unevenly without order, like Cloud's…

Cloud. At first she does not remember that he is dead. She remembers instead the way he shuffled when in persistent thought, or the stupid flush that used to rise into his cheeks, revealing an irrational reluctance to speak. Details, small and important, about when he gave speeches, or gave orders, or simply stood and stared off into space, which had been more often than not. She remembers his eyes, the beautiful glow of his irises regardless of the mood he was in.

Her heart drifts towards the pit of her stomach, as she comes to realize Barret hadn't been kidding, and the reality that she hadn't been able to handle it.

Where is she?

She closes her eyes—she recalls collapsing, the tickling numbness that had risen up her legs. The hospital, then? It would explain the silence, and the cold. She recalls praying that this abrupt bout would be her last, that fainting now would be the final time; she remembers wishing, finally, ultimately, to die.

Suddenly the stillness shatters, the door to her room eases open, and the light floods in.

"Cloud?" A woman whispers into the dark, hurried anxiousness swallowing her voice. For a moment there is no answer, then the intruder calls the name again, louder, and, closing her eyes, Tifa feels her heart, far in the depths of her intestinal tract, go numb. The body leaning on the bed is nudged awake with an irritated hiss.

He grunts, and picks his head off the bed. "Cath…what are you…?" She grabs his arm before he has a chance to complete the sentence, tugging him out of the chair and towing him towards the door, the light.

"Cloud." He resists her, glancing at the woman in the bed, still unmoving, still frozen. "You have to go. Time's up." There is a pause; Tifa doesn't dare move, afraid of the reaction she might have to opening her eyes and seeing Cloud Strife standing before her.

"I can't leave her, not now. It's so important—she's going to wake up, I know it! I have to be here when she wakes up, I promised…!"

And it is then that she remembers—she remembers his voice, coaxing her, pleading with her and softening her. She recollects someone pulling the tears from her eyes, the absence of warmth from the sun, and the sweet, chilled taste of oxygen in her lungs.

She has been gone a long time.

Somehow she feels deprived of something, not merely the patch of warmth where the top of her friend's head had been lying against her. She still does not know with certainty where she is—where she has been—only that she is awake, Cloud is here. She has only a small grasp of what promise he is referring to, but the fact remains clear that, whatever this specific promise was, he has fulfilled it, in existing, in breathing—in living, he has accomplished what no one else had ever dared to do for her. "I told you," the woman snaps, in her quick, exhausted breath, "five minutes and that's it! I gave you more than enough time, now let's go! If you're caught here we're both in trouble."

Cloud sighs. "Will you tell her…tell her I was here. When she wakes up. Vouch for me, so that she knows I kept my promise." The woman blows air through her nose.

"Fine, the promise, if she wakes up. Now come on." He steals one last fleeting glimpse at the woman in the hospital bed, still not satisfied and knowing he has no hope of sleeping tonight, and leaves, abandoning his best friend alone, smiling through her confusion.

The door to her room closes as quickly as Catherie is able, suspending the room around her in a thick swarm of blackness; she opens her eyes, shivering from the cold in her limbs, and quickly changes her mind. Her voice slurs in her throat when she tries to speak, creating a noise similar to that if she were choking on her own saliva, though her throat was painfully dry. She wants to call out to them, yet doesn't dare try to move the rest of her body—not after what had happened on her first attempt.

She remembers the feel of Cloud's hair between her fingers, despite the haziness of her senses; she savours the seconds when he had been jarred awake, the moment of clarity when she had realized exactly who was nestled against her. Regardless of the impulse that had stopped her from crying out for him, she basks in this peace—she hears his voice, whispering through the room. The confusion is beginning to be replaced by cold, as the black seeps in, and the icy air rapidly focuses on the point where his head had before lay. She prevents the words from forming entirely in her mind, keeping the reality from overwhelming her.

Cloud is alive. She feels is skin on hers, the warmth of his touch, the tranquility brought by his voice, and she knows that his presence had been contained in a body and not conjured by her illness, that this brief happiness is not a sleep-deprived body's hopeful illusion.

Her eyes have begun to tear, and the chill of them make her body shiver as they slide in rivulets down the sides of her face and across her ears. In the stale frigidity of her new room cold quickly soaks the linens, without another body to help her own fight against it. She knows without having to see that her toes are not moving at her command, and while that in itself is worrisome, she feels a rejuvenated strength and confidence that had perished long ago spark and begin to burn...

Second to last chapter: done! I can't believe there is only one more chapter to go and then this is finished...though I also can't believe it took me nearlya year to complete a story that's only fifteen chapters long (or will be, once entirely done). I'm so lazy. Anyway, Tifa's awake! (took Cloud long enough, he's so dumb). I'd like to ask for feedback on how I presented Cloud's feelings on Tifa, and vise versa—because, this fic being in Cloud's POV, he obviously doesn't know she's in love with him. Also, I had a hell of a time trying to keep this chapter from being too repetitive, from going around in circles; I'm glad it's over and done with, to say the least. And if you thought this was sappy, just wait for the last chapter.

Muchas gracias! Raine