Disclaimer: Same as last chapter!

A/N: Sankoo!

Tifa's eyes snapped open as she gave Cloud a relatively rough shove. The grating sound of someone clearing their throat permeated the silence, breaking the stolen kiss. The sound of two sets of lips peeling apart from the passionate act followed shortly thereafter, seasoned with guilty stares and strings of saliva as even more evidence of the crime they had both commited against the man standing just a few yards away.

Said bewildered man was standing ramrod straight, as if petrified in his position, glaring at the two as if by his gaze alone he could set them ablaze. His firey eyes seemed to glow an even more startling hue fueled by the new intensity of the feelings stirring within him. He felt the first sinews of his hold on Chaos beginning to snap within him. He was mentally choking down the scene and fire within, hoping beyond all hope to avoid a very messy battle to what would surely be the death.

The intensity of everything he had ever suspected smacked him the face with a taste as bitter as bile and the impact of running straight into a well-cast Barrier spell. He had felt this coming in the very depths of every inch of him that could sense things intuitively, yet out of spite he turned a blind eye to the inevitable and gave them both the benefit of the doubt. The betrayal was something that transcended simple anger and hurt, it was something that was beyond love. It was almost what he could have only imagined was the first coils of spurned hate that he felt beginning to kindle in the bottom of his stomach. He closed his eyes to the scene in front of him and tried to will it away, hoping that once the lids raised from his eyes, he would find that he had just been lost in nothing more than another one of his morbid, imagined scenarios.

When he opened his eyes there was no such gift to await him. No good news to settle the burning in his soul. But for the first time since the blonde's name had become as common as a household item, he felt as though his eyes had truly opened up.

"Vincent...how long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough, I assure you."

He had not been standing there long enough to hear Tifa's shuddering confession of putting on nothing more than a loving facade towards the seething man, but it was true that he had been standing there long enough to get the gist of what had occured while he had been away.

"So is this how it happens Tifa? One man leaves you alone long enough for another to seduce you and you're willing to risk it all on the chance of something better?" He purposefully threw in all the vitriol he possibly could to make himself sound as bitter as he felt. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen now, right in front of his opened eyes, not while he had them shut to the truth.

"No! It's not like that at all! You just had really bad timing..."

"I was the one with the bad timing? Maybe it was you and your LOVER...shouldn't be kissing when you're not sure where I am." He was slowly losing control and began to feel the first breaks in his skin as the leathery wings of his demonic alter ego pushed to be released from it's fleshy prison.

Cloud, after many uninterrupted years of fighting, noticed the first shudderings of the transformation. Acting quickly he cast a sleeping spell on the vulnerable man, taking advantage of the fact that he had not had the need to dress or accessorize for battle conditions since returning to Nibelheim.

Vincent crumpled instantly under the sway of the strong spell, and was caught before hitting the ground by his very repenitant fiancee. Using the unGodly strength she had been granted, she hauled the sleeping figure to the couch and let him snooze there gently. She rolled him on his stomach and kept her hands pressed to his back, closely surveying the degression of the wings back into his form. Once she was satisfied that they were indeed sinking back into him, she cast a quick curative spell to undo the damage that the opening changes had caused and lay her head across his. She stroked his back and whispered words she knew he could not hear, nevertheless understand, praying that when he awoke they could work things out.

"Look at what you've done! You're ruining everything!" She gaped up at the sullen figure looming over her. Her eyes shined with the first glimmer of withheld tears.

"It wasn't...it wasn't supposed to happen like that. I didn't think...I just meant to see if you loved me. I meant to show you that I loved you too. I think I'm going to go for a while, see if there isn't somewhere else for me to stay. I really don't feel comfortable staying here anymore. Espescially after all the trouble I've caused."

Tifa nodded sullenly at him. "You're not going to leave me again, are you? I need you to at least stay until everything is done with. At least until everything has been resolved."

Looking straight into her eyes, he made his final avowal, and he meant to see it through.

"Tifa Lockheart, I don't intend to leave you ever again unless one of the following things should happen. I'll only leave if you tell me to. I'll only leave if you should become Mrs. Valentine. I'll only leave if you...if you agree to become Mrs. Strife, and I'm leaving with you by my side." He bore into her with his intense blue eyes, which incidentally forced her to look away.

"I can't promise you anything Cloud. Nothing at all. Everything is so messed up, and I'm so mixed up inside. I don't know if you understand, but this is just how it is. But I'll trust you when you tell me you'll stay until one of those goals have been reached." She looked down at the dark man beside her and contrasted him with the ray of sun that she beheld before her. With a sigh she felt him stir and urged Cloud to take his leave.

Grabbing his duffel, Cloud left the house and headed for the inn. He hoped that if only for tonight he would have some luck finding somewhere else to stay.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Vincent cracked a groggy eye and found Tifa still by his side, massaging the spots where the wings had pierced his skin. Once he worked past the drowsy feeling that usually came with recovering from a spell like that, his anger came back to him renewed, though just a bit duller than it had previously been.

He sat up fast and forced Tifa away from him. He didn't want her to touch him at the moment.

"Vincent, it's not what it looked like. I wasn't cheating on you! You walked in right when he grabbed me and forced that on me."

"If that's the case, then you shouldn't mind if I go and punish him for forcing a woman to do something she did not want to."

The statement was a direct challenge. If she protested, she admitted that she had wanted it. If she let him go, well, God only knows what the enraged man would do to Cloud. She stammered for a response as he sat up and started towards the door. Pulling out Death Penalty from his jacket she threw open the door and made his way down the stairs of the porch. Tifa released a startled cry and chased after him, calling his name, urging him to think it over.

"Look! Vincent! I know it was forced, but please! Reconsider! Is it really worth taking his life for this? Just ask him to leave town, I'm sure he will!" She lied through her teeth just to try and calm him. Keep him from killing Cloud. He ignored her cries and went to one of the meandering villagers. Glaring down at the man, he curtly asked if a spikey-haired, blonde man with overbright blue eyes had passed through. The man, fearing just the look that Vincent had given him was more than happy to oblige the information that indeed such a man had been here, and was as a matter of fact, staying at the nearby inn. Satisfied with the answer, he trudged forward. His fiancee finally caught up to him and grabbed him by the arm.

"Please! Please...stop this right now! I don't want anything happening...it's all just a big misunderstanding!" She gave him her most beguiling look and prayed with all her heart she could change his mind about what he meant to do.

Shaking her off, he went into the inn and found the room where Cloud was staying. Cloud, who had expected something like this, was sitting on the edge of his bed, carefully sharpening Ultima Weapon. He smiled up at the older man.

"Take it outside?" He asked. It was more of a statement than a question. "I'm not quite as rich an an ex-Turk I assure you. I don't think I could cover the damages we may cause to this place."

Removing themselves from the inn, and from the entire town for that matter, (netiher one of them wanted to risk innocents getting hurt in the crossfire), they stood atop the same precipice that Tifa had on that cold morning on Mt. Nibel.

They never broke each other's gaze, even for a second. There was too much at stake here. Their lives for one, and more importantly the love of a woman who was still desperately pleading for them to find a more peaceful way to resolve things.

Cloud readied his sword in front of himself and stood, muscles tense, prepared to attack.

Vincent cocked his gun and pointed it at his adversary's face. He smiled.

"Well, look on the bright side my friend...it'll be a relatively painless death. For you."

TBC