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Heart Of Ice

Chapter Two

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Tifa was pacing in front of the fireplace now, fingernails at the mercy of her nervous teeth as the hours wore on. Barret could not sleep with all her nervous movements and instead slowly pounded his head on the surface of the table, attempting manual unconsciousness. It wasn't that he didn't care about Tifa's feelings or Spike's situation, but he was tired, dammit, and all this worrying was not improving the situation.

"Dammit, Teef, now get some sleep!" he exclaimed, but not without a gruff, fatherly softness in his voice. Vincent silently dozed in his corner, chin dropped to his chest where his arms were folded. Unconcerned as usual, but confident that Cloud would either triumph or fail miserably, he agreed with Barret about there being no need for fretting the inevitable.

Tifa paced on, hearing nothing but the howling of the blizzard outside.

I should have gone, she kept thinking. But no, he had to be so stubborn...

"Teef, let me handle it," he had said earlier that morning, when the wind was only carrying soft gusts of snowflakes. "I'll be there and back again before you know it."

"Are you insinuating that I'm slow, Cloud Strife?" she had said, playfully poking him in the ribs. "Because I could beat you up a mountain side any day. Must I remind you of that fateful Nibelheim Spring Festival? Just who was it that won first place, totally dusting you in three minutes flat?" She grinned at the memory of him sulking when she claimed the title "Queen of the Mountain" for the fourth year running.

"That's not the point. It's too--"

"Dangerous," she finished, knowing his patented line. "I know. Why do you think that I'm having this argument with you? I don't want you risking yourself any more than you want me..."

"Tifa," he said firmly, his hands squeezing her shoulders as he stared at her seriously. "You know that I don't doubt your abilities, but letting you go up that mountain alone would be like watching you fall off of that cliff all over again..."

Tifa looked away, more ashamed at the memory of the blame that had been unfairly placed on Cloud after the incident than at her own clumsiness.

Cloud's eyes softened at her expression. He didn't want to bring up bad memories, but he just couldn't explain how much this meant to him in any other way.

"Teef, don't worry about that anymore," he continued. "I know that you'd scale that mountain in half the time it would take me, but I have more combat experience than– oh, no you don't–" he had said as she opened her mouth wide to protest. "I will take care of this, and if you refuse to agree with me, then I'm going to have Yuffie tie you to a chair and have Vincent keep watch over you."

Tifa stamped her foot, childishly, she knew, but old habits died hard. It was like they were seven years old again.

"Cloud! You can not just tell me to let you just go up that glacier alone and be all right with it!" she shouted.

She stood glowering up at him while he grinned goofily back. In one fell swoop, Tifa was upended over Cloud's shoulder as he carried her through the cabin like a sack of grain. She screamed and protested, pounding her fists on his back as he laughed at her, throwing her onto the bed and running from the room, locking the door behind him.

"CLOUD STRIFE!" she yelled, pounding on the offending wooden door. "YOU HAD BETTER OPEN THIS DAMNED DOOR RIGHT THIS INSTANT OR SO HELP ME I'LL--"

Cloud chuckled to himself from the other end and tossed the key to Vincent. "Don't let her out of there until I've had a fair head start," he warned.

"As if you were playing fair to begin with..." Vincent muttered.

Cloud blithely ignored that last comment, picked up his journey pack, and slammed the door of the cabin closed behind him.

Twelve hours later, anger had been replaced with worry and even a slight panic as Tifa inwardly cursed herself. Why did she have to be so weak? Why did he have to be so stubborn? Questions and time seemed to be Tifa's constant companions, and she was thoroughly tired of their company.

Resolve stiffening in her spine, she strode briskly into the only other room of the tiny cabin that the group had rented during their investigation of Icicle Inn.

Having finally achieved a numb stupor, Barret snored loudly in a small puddle of drool on the table. It was a moment or two before his drowsy brain registered the presence of another person in the room, and even longer before he realized that it was practically flying over the furniture, slamming cupboards and stuffing provisions into a knapsack with the speed of a wildcat.

Much worse than a wildcat, Barret confirmed once his vision cleared. "Hey, hey!" he shouted thickly, trying to brush off the effects of a pounding headache induced by alcohol and literal pounding. Tifa was just sliding into her winter cloak when Barret rushed out of his chair and grabbed her wrist.

"Yo shadow-man, she's tryin' to escape!"

Vincent slowly opened one eye for the simple pleasure of watching the scene unfold before him. Barret was staggering around the room, rushing and tripping over pieces of furniture while Tifa leapt clear of the table and sprang out the door. With a sigh, Vincent left his warm little corner and dashed out into the pitch-black of the night after her.

He caught her easily, just outside the threshold. His grip fastened like a vice around her wrist. She tugged and whirled around, giving Vincent one of her most lethal "Glares-Of-Death." Vincent, the King of Glaring himself, couldn't resist a tiny wince– Tifa was definitely a glaring pro.

"Let me go, Vincent!" she yelled. "I have to find him!"

"Not right now," he answered in his trademark monotone. "I can sense your trepidation, and it blinds you even more than the darkness and the driving snow."

"Vince is right, Teef," Barret said as he slumped against the door frame, still panting from the sudden exertion of falling over a footstool. "It's not that we don't want to help, or that we want to keep you caged up in here, but it just ain't the right time..."

"Time? Time!" Tifa yelled, growing more wild with frustration the longer she was being held in place. "You give me time and I'll make sure that Cloud is back here safe again!"

Barret let out a long, exaggerated sigh. He hated explaining things.

"Tifa, you don't make no damn sense, girl. You've got a smart head on yo' shoulders, now think about this a minute." Barret took a deep breath and pointed a finger at Tifa.

"Fast you might be, but there ain't nothin' short of a sleigh ride from Santa that's gonna get you up that mountain in this blizzard. As if the damned snow wasn't enough, it's the goddamned middle of the night, so I suggest you get your skinny white ass into bed and then we all gonna haul ass up there in the morning and drag that dumbass Spike back down here by his hair, okay?"

Tifa's mouth gaped slightly during Barret's proclamation, and Vincent once again shared a private smile with himself. Sometimes, all the world needed was someone like Barret to tell it to just "Sidownanshu'up."

Tifa knew he was right, she didn't even need his blatant pronunciation of the stupidity of trying to find Cloud right then, but her feelings had gotten the better of her. While her mind rationally reminded her of the practicality of waiting, her heart rammed against her rib cage in a mad jog up that mountainside. Sense might have won this battle, but her heart would burst before it lost the war.

"BRRR!" Barret suddenly exclaimed, hopping up and down and wrapping his arms around himself. "It is damn cold out here. Can we just get one goddamn good night of sleep?"

He turned around and went back in-doors, followed shortly by Vincent after he had sent a knowing glance toward Tifa. She nodded numbly, and dragged her feet back into the house.

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Cloud was not aware of when the shrieking stopped, or if it even had, considering the ringing in his ears. He did know that he was lying with his face to the floor, judging by the angle of things, and that he could not feel his body.

He tried to shake the double vision from his eyes, but had the odd sensation that he didn't even have a head to shake. Alarmed, he opened his mouth to scream. He succeeded in creating a tiny, rasping squeak, but the relief of finding some small assurance that he had a body to make that sound with was rewarding enough.

He was able to slowly blink his eyes as he tried to survey his situation. He was still in the ice cave where he had encountered that wretched shrieking creature, but it was nowhere in sight. His years in the military had taught hard lessons, however, and he knew that the moment you thought your enemy to be vanquished was the very moment that you had to be the most wary.

Realizing that he would get no cooperation from his stiff body, Cloud closed his eyes, listening very intently. His Mako-enhanced senses pricked up as he concentrated, mentally feeling and searching the world around him.

A shuffling sound, behind and to the left.

"Wretched...wicked little creatures... Intruding in my home, corrupting ... their filthy burning touch..."

Cloud's eyes squeezed tightly as he willed himself to move. If only he could get some feeling back into his limbs...

"Show them... Purify in a white shroud of frozen beauty... Wretched mammals will suffer, I'll show them..."

Fingers, thumbs, toes, the tip of his nose, anything...

"And this one... Kill it first, it tried to use the greatest transgression of its kind... It shall be punished most severely..."

"RRRRAAAHHH!"

Cloud shouted in exertion and succeeded in rolling his body over so that he was staring at the cave ceiling. The menacing voice also screamed in surprise, but not the piercing, mind-stunning screech as before; it was a feral cry of surprise.

"You!" It bellowed indignantly as Cloud rocked himself back and forth, trying to induce some blood flow in his frozen body.

"You wield the foul essence of the fire demon, Ifrit!" it cried. "You obscene vermin! How dare you approach me!"

Before Cloud could glance out of the corner of his eye, he was suddenly introduced to the ceiling as his body rose from the ground and collided with the opposite wall. Dazed, but definitely feeling the prickling sensation of pain from the impact, Cloud looked down and found himself floating in the air. Below him stood the creature in blue. An ethereal light glowed around its outstretched hands as its cruel eyes glared up at him. Following the sharp motion of the creature's arms falling down, Cloud too crashed back to the Planet.

Now fervently wishing that he could go back to not feeling a thing, Cloud winced in pain. The monster stood over him, peering down at him from behind the folds of its robe.

"A curse!" it cried. "A curse upon the transgressor who dare approach me! May your cruel heart be frozen and stifled, never to feel the warmth of life again!"

Cloud screamed, his body contorting with pain such as he had never felt. It was like ice being driven into every vein, freezing him as thoroughly as if he had fallen into a frozen lake. His cries went on into the night until he knew no more.

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Disclaimer: I did not create/publish/sell Final Fantasy VII, its characters, locations, plots, etc. It all belongs to Squaresoft.