Chapter XIV : Her Most Beautiful Smile

The sun rose slowly, creeping with deliberate care. Clouds were few, but thick and wide, and the morning sunlight blinked for succinct moments as the wind pressed the fleeting shadows over the city. Blacks weakened into steel grays, brightness and brilliance and color fading, the excitement of the night wasting to the terrible, wonderful monotony that was the everyday. The sun would be rising in Nibelheim, and the sun would be setting in Nibelheim.

My muscles were sore, from sitting for so long, tired and constricted. I felt dirty, the whole of me from the inside out—my skin stretched caked in a thick, irremovable layer of filth, my bones having gradually fragmented, and my internal organs liquefying into slick, excruciating masses. They churned and simmered beneath my flesh; I could feel them each rotting, disintegrating and melding—if I vomited now—which I felt very much like doing—the whole of my insides would come spilling out into the streets of Junon, and no one would have been awake to see them. Upon leaving the hospital, my boots sliding heavily across the tile flooring, my heart was the first to go. It went slowly, sinking as the sun does, unnoticeably, until it was so far gone I could merely feel the emptiness grow, and I missed it. I missed the small shred of life I had made that hadn't been entirely consumed by guilt, and as the sky cleared of the remaining traces of storm, as the clouds raced themselves to mask the sunrise, I wasn't sure I would be able to handle it.

I left her. If pressed I would have admitted I didn't give a damn about Catherie, nor her job at the psychiatric hospital—she was better off elsewhere and she knew it. What I did care about, however, was Tifa. I cared about Tifa, more than anyone could have guessed, and that fact remained. It remained, frozen and set, right alongside the reality that I had left her.

You can't fake this, Tifa…you have to trust me.

I sat hunched over on the sidewalk a block from the hospital, unwilling to leave completely and entirely uneager to return home so soon. Home. I had lived in this city for approximately five weeks and three days, and now I was prepared to leave it, abandon it wholeheartedly for the life I had adopted after Meteor, now that I had succeeded in utterly destroying the last lives I had trusted myself to care for.

Standing was harder than it should have been, the broken shards of my joints crushing together as I struggled to stand. The sun, flaming orange and magenta and red, had risen completely, if not entirely visible because of the towering edifices blocking most of the oceanic horizon. The pace I took while heading back to Barret's apartment was sluggish and deliberate; I would stop occasionally, standing amidst any stray skein of sunlight and feeling the last strangled clumps of rain evaporate from my clothing. It was a purely physical pleasure, pure in all sense of the word. My life was in its last dying minutes, shortening with each step I took, and with my body dissipating and my will to continue deteriorating, I would never be free to experience pleasure or happiness to any emotional purity. I paused, reaching my destination, and stared up at the window floors up above my head; I could have caught glimpses of moving figures within in the building, had I made the effort, but I didn't make the effort, and refocused my energy towards the squares of concrete moving under my feet.

The apartment, in a brief, slow second, was silent as I closed the front door behind me. Then Marlene came into the kitchen, and proceeded to stare at my guilty, listless self and hide whatever immediate thoughts that came to her behind two large green eyes. Barret, hearing his daughter's silence, followed suit.

"Where were you?" He was in the process of slipping one arm into his jacket, neither of his shoelaces tied and another wrinkle having sprouted in the corner of his mouth. Marlene did not leave, keeping steady a gaze I would have otherwise found unnerving. "The hospital called. Stop mopin' around and let's go."

I wasn't moping; I didn't mope. I was not nervous in the same way Barret was nervous, with his frenzied panic. Unlike him, unlike Marlene, unlike the rest of the outside world, I knew why that phone call had been made, and I wasn't at all prepared for the consequences. "I was taking a walk," I said quietly. The little girl at the other end of the kitchen opened her mouth, closed it again. When I made no effort to move, Barret shot me a look, and though the threat lacked a certain verve, it was not hindered by way of overall effectiveness—I found myself out in the street once more, my friend quickly having forecasted to his daughter the uncertain time we would be coming back. Her voice was a hesitant whine as he closed the door, and shoved me down the stairs.

His heels clapped anxiously against the pavement, and at my lagging, disheartened pace, he came near to losing me in the streets several times on our short journey to the hospital. He would stop, glance back and wait for me, glaring to partially hide the haste, but I never returned the gesture, keeping my eyes downcast. I wasn't sure I would ever be able to look him in the eye again. Although he was nervous, and worried, as was completely natural and entirely expected, even he possessed a certain hope—the hope of ignorance, a hope bred from too much silence and too little faith.

The floor upon entrance did not emanate any particular sense of urgency—I, of all people, would have noticed if there had; yet there was something, an underlying aura of discord amid the ward, an essence of disturbance of the routine. Small details, facets that would otherwise have made no difference whatsoever, were scattered throughout the receptionist lobby. And I caught them, observing and holding the discrepancies, while Barret was forced to negotiate with a receptionist who was not Catherie, who coerced him into signing a complete visitor's form anyway. Her hazel eyes fluttered to my position sulking behind him, and her round face paled slightly, though Barret took no notice of the change. He stepped large and full, and I followed, slovenly, feeling the stare of the substitute secretary burning holes in my back.

This, of course, was nothing compared to the stares we received in the rec room. Those able turned, albeit slowly, and positioned themselves comfortably enough in preparation for viewing the events without requiring much movement in their seats. These were not angry, resentful stares—the blaming and hateful kind. These patients, deciding the occasion important enough to deserve attention, stared with curious, almost jealous intensity, the type only those in semi-comatose and vegetative states were capable of providing. My companion didn't heed them, and gave a rushed nod towards one of the sideline nurses—she automatically understood, catching sight of me, and led us through a pair of swinging doors, away from the rec room and the empty eyes and in the opposite direction of the dorms. Beyond was another larger room, another foyer, one that I hadn't known existed or cared to mind in all the weeks I'd visited. This room connected with two hallways, one carpeted and the other veering off to the right. At the entrance to the grey-carpeted hallway stood Catherie, her arms folded across her chest and all blood having drained from her flesh. She glanced at the nurse ahead of us, then towards Barret, and finally me—her reaction was the same as the night before, eyes widening to where all three of us could see the dark red circles sagging beneath them.

The other nurse continued with only a blink of acknowledgement towards the flustered receptionist, and indicated for us to wait outside another door, disappearing into the room and letting it close gently behind her. Catherie leaned over to me—up close I could see she had probably gotten as much sleep as I had—and hissed.

"What the hell did you do to her?" I didn't get the chance to respond, not before Barret clutched my arm and pulled me inside.

It was a nice office, as far as doctor's offices go. That much I was able to recognize. Directly in front of us was the desk, the wall behind covered completely with books and pamphlets and dossiers. This I used to avert my gaze from the man who had risen from his chair as Barret and I had appeared in the room, a man I hadn't seen in nearly four weeks, once he, like the rest of the hospital and staff, had gotten used to my regular visits. His face was, for the most part, unreadable, even when his greetings reached me, and my presence was acknowledged officially. The air we had entered was thicker than the humidity that swarmed outside, pungent with what I was too anxious and too exhausted to discern; I focused on the potted plants strategically positioned in each corner of the room, repeatedly swallowing to keep my ears from popping in the thickness. It smelled too sterile here for a psychiatrist's office, as centered in the ward as it was.

The doctor rounded his desk, yet didn't move towards us; instead he was about to encourage us forward.

A disturbance in the depths beat him to it.

I would never be sure what it was that moved—it was several things, perhaps, combined to generate a noticeably whole and overwhelming difference. The doctor shifting his weight to one foot, all of Barret's muscles and organs freezing, another nurse at the front of the room beside one of the armchairs opening her mouth to speak, eyes downcast. But it would be my muscles, my mind, and my heart which stopped. All as an ashen, broken figure adamantly hoisted herself up out of the left armchair, white hospital gown cascading down to her ankles, dark, straight tangles of hair falling across her face, shielding it.

But she couldn't hide from me; I knew who she was without having to see her face.

Her eyes were brown, and her hair was black, both limp and flat. Her knuckles were like pearls, white under the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling, smooth from her grasp on the arm of the chair. The nurse, standing behind her, hesitantly moved as if to stop her when the patient's grip loosened, as she began to move away towards the back of the office. But Tifa was on a mission. I could hear the atrophied muscles in her legs struggling to function, her joints and limbs moving with weak but persistent fragility. She could barely walk, but it was better than any of the other patients on this floor could do.

She didn't look at me. She took painstaking, deliberate care in not looking at me, instead focusing on the floor and her feet and the distance she would have to traverse in order to reach us. Barret's breath came in short and hurried beside me, as if he was too preoccupied to breathe; he was too busy watching as Tifa made her way across the room, listening to the sound of her footsteps as the hospital sandals slipped on the tile, anticipating the moment when she was in front of him. She brought her head up, letting the sheets of hair fall back, revealing her eyes and her lips and her face, all concentrating on the effort it would take to smile back at him. The slightest of pauses, and then she gave all energy to throw her arms around his broad shoulders, sacrificing her balance in the faith that he would catch her. For Barret, the shock took its time in receding, until he returned the gesture, and they embraced. It was a ridiculous image, the two of them—touching and beautiful, yes, but ridiculous all the same.

No one said anything. I stared, anticipating.

Tifa sniffed repeatedly, possessing the strength to keep from bawling outright, yet without the ability to keep herself composed. Her hands slipped down from his back, and they parted, slowly. Immediately, her eyes found the floor, but it wasn't to concentrate on her steps—Barret kept a firm grip on her arm, steadying her. I was barely a foot to the side of him, yet her pace was markedly unhurried; her gaze was steady, slightly reluctant and too apprehensive to glance up at me too soon.

She did look up, though, in a wavering glimpse, only when she was directly in front of me, and had put off the act for as long as possible.

She brought her hands up, shakily, then let them drop. Her fingers were gaunt, like the rest of her, and they rose again, brushing against my shoulder and sending a jolt of shivers through her small frame—which happened promptly whenever there was further direct contact. They rose up, gradually higher, and her tongue slicked across her lips to catch the tears as they fell. Her hands found my face, seeing for her, tracing with touch my neck and the sides of my cheeks. Her eyes swirled; eventually they, too, lifted, sodden with a thousand emotions all reeling and tumbling, all paralleling the frown plastered to her ashen lips.

Tifa wrapped her arms around the my neck. She hugged me, and began to cry. I returned the gesture. Her flesh was cold, and her tears had begun to soak into the collar of my shirt.

It was nice.

I hugged her back, clutching with gradually increasing force until I was pulling all of my energy into not wanting to let her go. There were hardly any soft spots on her, where on a healthy woman there would have been plush and supple, and I hugged what was left with the realization that soon, eventually, she would be healthy again. Because I wasn't going anywhere. Because she wasn't going anywhere.

We only broke apart when someone coughed—although there were only three other people in the room, I was unable to pinpoint just who it was who had interrupted our reunion. Tifa, however, didn't complain, if showing the slight strain of reluctance before breaking off completely. I kept my eyes on her, watching her, suddenly unable to hear anything other than the sounds of life emanating from our bodies.

The doctor nodded to the nurse, then, striding along side her scurrying, came up to us. "Will you please take her back to her room?" He thanked the nurse, and a shudder from Tifa passed through me. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Wallace and Mr. Strife privately…"

I spoke before he had the chance to continue, a very large part of me protesting the words that were coming from him. "I'll…go with her, if that's okay." I eyed Barret, "You can tell me everything later." His lips simply thinned in response, until he too closed his eyes and nodded. Tifa's doctor agreed, and Tifa didn't say anything at all. I could tell she was relieved by how the jolts in her composure had ceased. The nurse gripped Tifa's other hand to steady her as we walked, and we headed out into the hallway. Catherie, who was still, stubbornly, deliberately positioned ahead of the door had her eyes, glimpsing only at me for a second, focused dutifully on the patient, who, upon staggering out the doctor's office and having expended most of the energy required to stand—much less walk—was leaning on me for the needed support. She couldn't have weighed, at best, more than a hundred pounds.

The walk back to the dorm was agonizingly slow, merely because the nurse, assuming full and eager responsibility of making sure Tifa made it to her room in one piece, set the pace to a crawl even a baby would have been discontented with. When we arrived at our destination, finally, she surprised me by, after seeing Tifa securely seated on the bed with minimal chance of falling off, passing out, or otherwise having need for her services, left us, both, alone, with the silence.

I didn't know what to expect; the object of thanks had never crossed my mind. But never would I have guessed that Tifa was capable of forgetting everything that had happened in the past month.

Her eyes rose, again slowly. "When did you get back?" Her voice was smaller than I remembered, smaller than that of her conscience; she was hardly a foot beside me, and yet I could only hear the smoothness as a whisper, hesitant and afraid. I looked at her, confused, yet my gaze didn't seem to inspire any recollection of our conversations, my battles.

"You don't remember? I told you when I…" I faltered.

Her brow furrowed. "You told me when?"

I couldn't think of what to do. I had to start over. Did it mean that she had regressed in the past hours back to the same mentality that had driven her to hide in the first place? Or did she want to live, knowing I was alive, merely because I was alive? Did she realize now that she didn't have to keep secrets?

Then, maybe, almost, she didn't realize that I hadn't been there when she had awoken…

So lost in thought as I was, the sound of her breath came as a shock. "When you were here last night?" Here as in the hospital. I stared at her in disbelief.

"Tifa," I started, "I'm so sorry I couldn't be there. Catherie only let me have five minutes, and most of that time I spent…trying to get you to wake up. She wouldn't let me stay—she said she'd tell you that I was here, I asked her to…" I couldn't find the words. She was staring at me in puzzlement, trying to make sense of my rambling. For a second, neither of us said anything at all; we sat in awkward quiet.

"Catherie…she's the nurse in the hallway, right?"

I nodded, slowly. "That was her, but she's not a nurse, she's a secretary, at the front desk. She's the one who let me in last night to see you."

"Isn't that against the rules?" she asked, carefully. "That's why you left so suddenly." She didn't lose the confounded countenance, but she didn't need any affirmation on my part to know that she was right. "I figured as much. And she did come to see me, after the doctors and nurses and everybody had had their turn. She said that you've visited me in hospital since you got to Junon." A pause. "She said you had something to tell me, when you got here…" For the moment I didn't understand that she expected an answer to her question, and before I shrugged in response I came to terms with the fact that I had no idea as to what Catherie had been referring.

"Maybe she'll tell me what that is exactly, next time I see her." We both smiled.

"What happened?" Her hands, in their usual, indecisive manner, wrung themselves in her lap.

"You don't remember?"

She shook her head. "I remember…fainting in Marlene's bedroom—it was Marlene's room, wasn't it? That was sometime after Barret told me about the…the phone call and everything." Abruptly, her eyes rose, and she stared at me, waiting for me to disappear, anticipating the end to the dream. She bit her lip—it was apparent she had done so several times today, by the rawness of the flesh beneath her teeth. "I woke up here, and you were here, and you're still here, and I don't know what's going on…"

My hand rose instinctively, to reassure her, and I forced myself through conscious reluctance to keep from touching her. With everything she didn't know, it might frighten her away. Instead, I smiled, gently, and sighed.

I'd lost count how many times I had tried to explain this. "It was a mistake…" I described to her the faults and the mistrust that had passed from one messenger to the next, that by the time she herself had received the news I had been alive again, only no one had bothered to tell either her or Barret. Her brow furrowed, creating what seemed to be, for a while, permanent lines above her sunken eyes. I finished with apologizing, profusely. I should have called sooner than I had.

Tifa shook her head. "I can't believe it."

"Neither can I," I agreed, tentatively. "But here I am. I'm not going anywhere." A fresh storm of tears were slowly beginning to break their way through the makeshift cast she had carefully constructed upon expending the past batch back in the office; she closed her eyes, and bit her lip to keep them off—it was all she could do to keep from crying, exhausted as she was. After a moment, she refocused her gaze on me, reaching for my hand. I squeezed her in return, and her lips, sore from the habit, upturned in a tiny smile. "You're going to be all right, Tifa," I said.

So much for completing this story within a year...so sorry everyone! In any case, I've decided to take Cloti's advice and split the final chapter into two, for a variety of reasons, one of the biggest being I had not originally thought thatit would take me six months to update. My sincerest apologies to all of you! Thank you for being so patient with me! Furthermore, as a large chunk of the next chapter (what was supposed to be the end of this chapter) has already been written (last year, in fact), I'll give my very best effort to publish the final chapter ASAP (namely, within the next two months, because that's summer, and by that point, starting next week, I'll actually have timeto work on this).

Also, I've finally remembered where exactly the inscription on Tifa's mother's tombstone came from, so if any of you would like to give that a shot, go right ahead! To be revealed in the next/final chapter!

Once again, thank you for all your patience, Raine.