Disclaimer: Same as last chapter!
A/N: Sankoo!
From this remark, Cloud bore naught more than a smirk on his pretty face. He stabbed the tip of his sword into the soft earth and leaned on the hilt, still wearing that cocky yet petulant expression on his face.
"Well, if that's the case, a sword seems to be no match for a gun. Don't you think?"
Vincent shifted all his weight to one foot and drop the muzzle to the ground, glancing haughtily back at the man across of him.
"Then what would you have us do? Pick up rocks and try to stone one another to the death? Or would you rather have us go at it in a good old fashioned bar fight?" He flexed the mechanical fingers on his claw-arm. "I wasn't a member of the Turks for my gunslinger abilities alone."
A more bemused expression passed Cloud's face as he threw a sideways glance at Tifa.
"Now now, let's try and be men about this matter. Not schoolboys. After all, we have yet to hear what our fair damsel wants."
Both sets of eyes moved to Tifa and locked on to her countenence, which itself went from concerned horror to disbelief. Cloud had put her on the spot, it seemed as if it were do or die time for her.
"Well?"
Vincent looked lazily at the pair, scanning from one face to another. A part of him thought that this was all some well-choreographed plan that they had devised while he was away. That they knew exactly how this situation was going to play out and were Hell-bent on driving it to this point, just so she could profess her love for the other man and run away with him. Leaving the crimson-eyed man not only shamed and heartbroken, but all alone once more, tending to a female-inflicted emotional wound.
Her silence had dragged on for what seemed an eternity. In her mind, the gears were slowly churning, but could not help to quell her indecisive nature. On the one hand she wanted to escape with Cloud. Try and see if they could not have another go at the life they had before, only with a more proper ending this time than his betrayal. On the other, she was happy with the security she found in Vincent, and knew that he loved her more than imaginable, and that he would be the most sensitive, faithful, enduring lover she could ever hope for. She knew her mind was made up once the thoughts formed themselves as words on her lips.
"Cloud. I want-" her voice gave out on her halfway through her sentence, and she noticed how Vincent seem to shrink into himself, bracing for the news he expected. She also saw the shadow of a triumphant smile form on the blonde's lips. "I want Cloud...to leave. Tonight."
A set of stormy eyes bore into her own and silently questioned what she was doing. He had been so confident that he had her by a string!
"I want you to leave tonight. Or I'll give Vincent full permission and absolution, in my heart, from anything he may choose to do to you as a result of your failure to depart." She ran to Vincent's side and wrapped a tentative arm about his waist, hoping that he had forgiven her for everything that had happened since her still kindling old flame had shown up on their doorstep.
Vincent tugged at Tifa's frame and urged her to head down. With that said, he felt as if there were no need for any more words to be shared with Cloud. This isn't the way he had wanted things to go with any of the people he had saved the world besides, but if this is how the cards fell, then he was willing to let them, just so long as she was still by his side. The two of them left together, Tifa casting one last longing look back on the man who had still, after so long, managed to alter her life in earth-shattering ways.
Cloud watched their retreating forms and yanked his sword from the soil. He swung it wildly at the rocky outcrops venting the anger over the shameful loss he had just suffered. He had been cocky and that had been his downfall. Ever since he was a child it had been his overly ambitious nature that drew him to chasing impossibilities, thinking he was going to succeed, only to fail again and again.
"Well, if that's what she wanted, that's what I told her I would do."
He slowly picked his way down the mountain and decided to go to the Nibelheim Bar one last time before leaving this place and all of it's bitterness behind for good. The drinks weren't particularly excellent or anything, nor was the service, but this had been his bar and his hometown for so long. Now he was being forced out of both because of a stupid choice that he had made.
The sun sank far below the horizon and the stars began to wink up in their usual positions in the sky before he managed to unstick himself from the barstool and make his way back to the inn to gather up what little belongings were left to him now. With little grace or ceremony, he began to wildy rumple and throw things into his duffel and pick through the items he knew he wouldn't need. It was during this activity that he noticed a little red light was flashing on his PHS, letting him know that he had missed a call.
When he went to check who it was, no number registered, but there was a new voicemail waiting for him. He quickly dialed the number to his voicemail box and entered the password, each pulse mimicking the unsteady and irregular beat of his own nervous heart.
"You have one new message: First message:
Cloud?" It was hard to understand because it sounded as though she had been hushedly whispering at the time she recorded it.
"Cloud, it's me, Tif. I'm whispering because Vincent is showering now, and I don't want him to know that I'm leaving you this message. I really hope this is still your phone, and that you get this message, because if not, I'm just going to end up looking like a fool. I'm sorry about what I said up on Mt. Nibel, but it's true. I want you to leave, but I want to leave with you. If you're already gone, then keep going when you hear this. Don't come back. But if you're still here...I'll be waiting on my chocobo right outside of town in that small vegetated area with the pretty copse of trees we used to play hide and seek in. I'll wait there until sunrise tomorrow morning. If you come for me then I'm going away with you. We'll run for as long it takes for us to find somewhere where we can build a new life together. If you don't, then I know that this is just the way things were meant to be. He's getting out now, I gotta go. Hope to see you there."
He clicked off the phone and looked at the clock mounted on the wall. It was only 8:00. He knew that she wouldn't be waiting there that early. He licked his lips nervously and continued to pack all of his stuff. When he finished, he set the alarm clock to midnight and lay down on the bed, hoping to sleep before he went to see if things would really go his way.
Four hours later he was wide awake and throwing his bag of possessions across one broad shoulder. He quickly paid the bill for his stay and ran out of the inn. In the same manner of haste he loaded up his chocobo and mounted her, pacing her at a steady gate to the outskirts of town. Coaxing her to enter the area, he slowed the giant bird's pace and called out Tifa's name softly.
From her own dark corner of the heavily forrested area, she emerged atop her own golden bird, bedecked with a few bags of the things she felt were necessities in her new life.
Cloud beamed brightly, his own smile wide and bright enough to illuminate the entire area for miles. Her own smile joined his. They urged their steeds towards one another and shared a giddy conspiratorial glance at one another. Leaning in close they shared a quick yet emotion-packed kiss.
"I never dreamed that something like this could ever happen. Never."
She smiled at him and grabbed his hand.
"What about Vincent?"
"He's fast asleep now. He won't know what's happened until sunrise."
"How do we know he won't assume you were kidnapped or something?"
"Don't worry about any of that. Just think about the future, and what we can do from here with one another."
She smiled even brighter when he took her had and raised it to his lips. He glanced down at it as a puzzled look flitted across his face.
"What about this?" He inquired as he stroked her left-hand ring finger with his other hand.
"Like I said. Don't worry about it."
He shrugged nonchalantly and leaned in to claim yet another kiss. Doing so, they then started on the road to forever, side by side, at a steady trot, while still hand in hand. They appraoched the source of twilight without so much as a backward glance at the place both of their slowly mending hearts had once called home.
And maybe they were travelling towards the sunnier side of things.
The brightside of things.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Back at Tifa's house, a sullen figure bowed his head as he crumpled a single sheet of paper in his human fingers. The golden claws of his less-human arm were digging holes into the side of the bed where he had hoped that his now ex-fiancee, would have spent the rest of her nights lain.
Normally a man of great fastiduousness, never one to drink, he found himself rummaging through the storage area of their house where Tifa had kept the extra supplies for her bar. He grabbed as many liquors as he could carry and stumbled out of the house, not caring that it wasn't even shut out to anyone who would choose to intrude. He made his way back to the mansion he had once inhabited all alone, intent on becoming that way once more.
While choking down another bottle of the bitter liquid, he re-read the note, as though reading it over and over would change the words that were written.
"To My Mr. Brightside:
I remember like yesterday how you came and rescued me from a fate that would have been totally unbecoming of a woman who had helped save the world from a maniacal murderer and a giant meteor bound to wipe out the entire planet. You were the only thing that kept me going for the longest time.
You were there for me when I was down and out and when no one else even knew of the great sadness and pain that I carried in me. Or if they knew, didn't seem to care. You were to me, the hero that Cloud never was.
But tonight I have one last chance to see if he could ever live up to that promise. I have one last chance to see if things can't be how I always pictured they would before you walked into my life. Please forgive me now that I'm telling you that although I was the one who told him to leave, I intend to leave with him.
Maybe someday I'll be back when my heart's been trampled on for the last time. Maybe you'll be waiting here for me. Maybe you won't. But do whatever you think will make you happiest. Definitely. If I've learned nothing else from all of this, it's to do what you think will lead to the happiest road in your life.
I love you,
Tifa Lockheart"
Below her signature was his wedding ring, hastily taped above a small sidenote in the same womanly script.
"P.S.: I didn't think it would be right of me to keep this. Keep it for the next girl you may come to save and love. You never know, she might be me."
It wasn't until all the bottles of liquor were empty and the sun began to show signs of starting a cheerful, new day that he stumbled down to the basement of the Estate and unlocked a musty room with a single black coffin in it's center.
"I will be." He muttered drunkenly. "I will be right here, waiting for your return...until then. I never plan to let you go."
He slipped the ring onto his pinky and climbed into the coffin, clasping the letter to his chest. Closing the lid, he fell into a slumber that would block out the passing years like living death.
And maybe he dreamed it, or maybe he didn't, but one morning he could have sworn that a long-haired woman with eyes the color of summer's finest merlot, roused him from his death-like sleep and saved him from his eternal darkness, slipped the shimmering ring off of his finger, and kissed him.
And maybe he dreamed that he had opened his arms and told her "Welcome home."