Melodies at Midnight

by Somebody's Nightmare

Cloud's life is defined by tragedies and failures. Following the tragic deaths of his best friends, Cloud is raising their child, still reeling from the inadequacy and anger he's had since he was ripped from the girl he had fallen in love with 10 years ago, until they reunite. She was supposed to teach his son how to play the piano. Instead, she taught him how to love again.

3. Chapter 3

Melodies at Midnight

Chapter Three

—

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 | 3rd March

Reunion

"We finally meet again."

Despite the way that the midwinter Topside winds blew, Cloud felt as if all of the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air, as if he were choking silently, unable to breathe.

Tifa Lockhart was standing inches away from his face, her deep, scarlet-red eyes wide and glittering under Midgar's luminous sun. Her hands were balanced on her hips, and Cloud's eyes dropped to them, noticing instantly how narrow and cinched her waist was, how full her hips were.

He swallowed carefully, feeling sandpaper scrape at the back of his throat. His hands were trembling, and his palms had suddenly grown so sweaty he was certain he was only moments from letting his motorcycle helmet slip from his grip and crash to the concrete.

From where she stood, he could smell something sweet and fragrant drift toward him, tickling a memory somewhere deep in his mind. It was a confectionary scent that he hadn't come across in so long, so sugary he could almost taste it.

He managed to pull his eyes back up from her center, skimming over her breasts quickly until he found her face again. He realized he was sweating, and he hoped that she hadn't taken note of how openly he had surveyed her body. He remembered her being curvy back then - oh did he remember - but she had only been a teenager. Now, she was a full-grown woman, and miraculously, she had filled out even more.

But her face. The photo in the brochure Marle had given him was a sorry representation of the beauty he was now staring at, up front and in person, every line and curve bordered by sparkling sunlight. Her cheekbones were high, her lips full and a deep cherry red, her hair midnight black and satin against her shoulders and across her forehead.

And her eyes, almond-shaped and a bright, deep crimson red, were glittering up at him, instantly taking him back in time.

"Tifa…" he finally heard himself exhale, his breath a gush, his chest constricted as he shifted his weight to one side and tossed his head, trying desperately to not betray the typhoon of emotions whirling inside of him.

Tifa folded her arms under her breasts, and in the process, pushed their fullness up in a way that was impossibly distracting. Cloud felt a line of sweat roll down from his temple to his chin.

"Why did you lie on the phone?" she asked at once, her eyes narrowed, and Cloud was instantly reminded of every time Tifa had ever been slightly annoyed with him when they were young. It would always turn him on then, and right now was no exception.

"I - "

"You know what, never mind," Tifa shook her head, cutting him off and stepping back a bit, holding up a hand. "It's not important. You're here for your son, Denzel?"

"Y-yeah," Cloud stammered.

"You know, he told me right away who you were."

Cloud winced, finally moving to clip his helmet to the side of the bike and dismount it, swinging his leg over. He tried to ignore the stiffness in his crotch as he maneuvered.

"Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

He wasn't sure if he was imagining things, but Tifa looked a lot more upset than he had initially thought. She didn't just look annoyed. There was something in the glassiness of her eyes, in the furrow of her brows that spoke to something deeper.

Something like sadness.

She let out a deep sigh, then turned around. "Well, come inside. We can discuss Denzel's lessons in the bar."

Cloud hated himself for the way he stared at Tifa's ass the entire way up the steps, but he found he couldn't tear his eyes away from its round fullness.

He tried to pull himself together as they entered Seventh Heaven, tried to push the heat in his skin away so he could prop up a cool facade. The last thing that he wanted was for her to see how much she still affected him after all these years. He couldn't afford to let her catch on to his emotions, couldn't risk letting himself get caught up in the tangle of her own again.

If she hasn't noticed already, he thought inwardly to himself, brushing the back of his hand across his brow and wiping away the beads of sweat that had formed there.

He followed her inside, finding the bar's lighting low, the sunlight outside providing most of the light. Being a Sunday afternoon, there weren't many patrons frequenting the establishment. Cloud spotted a tall, brown-skinned man with the build of a linebacker at a booth, drinking with another man whose hands were outstretched over a wide, rotund belly. A woman with an auburn ponytail was wiping a table down where another group of patrons sat. And by the window, he saw Denzel sitting quietly across from a little girl with a pink ribbon in her hair.

"You can have a seat at the bar," Tifa told him, waving at Denzel. "I'll fix you a drink, if that's okay."

"S-sure," Cloud found himself stuttering again, and he wondered what the hell was wrong with him, wondered why the hell he felt like he was eighteen years old again and seeing this girl for the first time.

Denzel smiled and waved at him from where he sat, and Cloud realized it was one of the sunnier smiles he'd seen on the boy's face in a very, very long time. Cloud nodded and offered him a short wave back, before turning back to find that Tifa was already behind the bar, bending over for something underneath it and giving him a great view of the entire back of her body.

Sweet Shiva.

He slid onto a barstool, his nerves in a tumble and his heartbeat too loud in his chest. He could practically feel the mako pulsing against the blood in his veins as he felt himself light up with arousal at the sight in front of him.

He needed to get this under control, and fast.

Tifa rose to her full height and stood in front of him with a shaker and a glass. She mixed a drink wordlessly, then poured an amber-red liquid into the glass before sliding it skillfully to him.

"Thanks," he managed.

She shrugged, then leaned over the counter, folding her hands together. He noticed then that she was wearing fingerless, black compression gloves, and that her fingernails were perfectly shaped and painted a dark maroon color.

Stop looking at her.

He brought the glass to his lips and sipped. As soon as he swallowed, he felt the warmth travel through him, felt the ignition of alcohol in his bloodstream, sending a hazy wave of calm dizziness over his brain. The drink was slightly sweet, but laced with a bitter aftertaste. He savored it on his tongue, leaning forward on the counter on his elbows.

"That's our house special," Tifa informed him. "The Cosmo Canyon. What do you think?"

Cloud realized, in a bit of a stupor as his second sip wrapped itself around his brain, that the drink was the same color as Tifa's eyes. Impulsively, he lifted his glass up to hers and gave a toss of his head.

"Beautiful," he couldn't stop himself from saying it, but there it was, and she was blushing, turning away quickly behind the bar to grab a notebook that she thumbed through and eventually brought back to the counter. Cloud instantly cursed himself, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.

Pull yourself together, he inwardly berated himself.

"So, Denzel," Tifa finally began. "I wanted to talk to you about his lesson today."

Cloud just nodded, working with extreme difficulty to summon all of his bravado and to put up the coldest facade that he could. There was no way he could let himself get caught up with Tifa Lockhart again and expect to make it out in one piece.

He'd been through enough already, with her and with every other part of his life.

"He's very gifted," Tifa was saying, and Cloud was barely following her, his thoughts somewhere stuck in the past. "He doesn't have any experience with the piano, but he picks up very quickly. He seems to have a natural inclination towards music. He was very comfortable at the keys and followed along with some of the basic notations I taught him without much difficulty. I must admit, I have taught many children his age, and he is one of the brightest."

Cloud didn't know what to say to that, finding himself finally paying more attention to the conversation and not letting his attention stagnate on the way that Tifa's silver earring dangled dangerously by the dip in her throat. He nodded again, bringing his glass up to his lips to drink, hoping this Cosmo Canyon shit would get him just wasted enough to make it through the next ten minutes.

Tifa pursed her lips a bit at his silence. "He told me about his parents," she added softly. "Were they… musically inclined?"

Cloud winced, turning away from her, really not wanting to talk about Zack or Aerith. As soon as she brought it up, the air shifted coolly between them, and Cloud almost didn't want to look back at her. He let his line of sight hover over his drink for a moment while he thought about it. The best thing Zack was good at was being a pain in his ass, and Aerith, well, Minerva only knew. Aerith was one of the last living Cetra on the planet; she could have had a million superpowers for all he knew.

"I really don't know," he finally answered her, refusing to look back up at her and fall back into her glimmering cabernet depths again.

He heard her make a humming sound. "Well, no matter. My suggestion would be that he continues his lessons. I think he has a natural talent, and I would be very happy to cultivate it."

Cloud grimaced. Of course, she would say that. He could only imagine how much it was going to rake out of his wallet.

"How much are these lessons?" he asked bluntly.

Tifa dropped her palms to the counter again, flexing her fingers gingerly in her gloves, and Cloud couldn't stop the way that his eyes dropped down to her hands.

"Well, since you are a friend of Marle's," her voice was coy, and Cloud hated it; it reminded him of too many summer nights under a shroud of stars. "I can give you a reasonable price. How does two-hundred gil a lesson sound?"

Cloud turned away from her, drumming the gloved fingers of one hand against the wooden countertop while the other held his drink in his palm. That still sounded like a lot of money.

"I think we can meet once a week, for now," Tifa continued. "Eventually, we can increase the lessons as his skill develops."

Cloud sighed audibly, unable to control himself and the raging petulance that was threatening to emerge. "Fine, yeah. I guess."

Tifa opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted when the woman with the auburn ponytail appeared behind the bar, dropping a couple of glasses into the adjacent sink. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned around toward Cloud.

"Wow, Tifa!" she exclaimed, dropping her hands to her hips. "And just who is this? I've never seen you with anyone so cute!"

Cloud turned away from both of them on the barstool, bringing his glass with him, sipping it as his cheeks began to burn.

"Jessie, this is Denzel's father," Tifa explained in a soft, gentle voice, and Cloud remembered hearing that same tone so many years ago when he had been laying next to her on top of pink and coral floral bedsheets. "My client this afternoon."

"Ah," Jessie conceded, her warm brown eyes resplendent and shining. "A hot dad, huh? Nice, Tifa."

"Jessie, please!" Tifa hissed, and Cloud stared down at his boots, ready to flee.

Jessie laughed, making herself scarce at Tifa's sharp tone. He heard her sigh, and he cautiously turned to glance back at her.

"Sorry about that," she apologized.

Cloud just shrugged.

An awkward silence transpired, and Cloud watched Tifa's face as her eyes dropped to her hands where they were resting on the bar's countertop. Finally, he felt like this was the perfect opening to escape, and he drained his drink before sliding off of the stool.

"We should get going now," he told her, dropping his hands into his pockets so she wouldn't see how they were shaking or how sweaty they were.

She looked up at him as if she were surprised, then lowered her gaze again and nodded.

"Oh, okay," she replied. "You'll bring him back the same time next week, then?"

"Yeah, okay," Cloud agreed. He started to turn away, eager to get away from the entrancement of her presence, but she was pulling him back in with the willowy, husky threads of her voice.

"Cloud?"

He turned back to her, finding his eyes crashing square into wide, ruby gemstones. He realized that she was wearing faint dustings of kohl around her lids, making her appear all the more doe-eyed and alluring.

"It…it was nice to see you again," she went on. "It's been a really long time."

He realized that her eyes were hopeful and misty, that her lips were parted but turned up slightly into a smile.

Cloud felt his insides begin to dissolve into pure liquid and then boil. Even the faintest of a smile from Tifa Lockhart in his direction could send his heart into tatters, could have him doing the stupidest shit without even a second thought. There had been a time when he would have jumped into oncoming traffic just to see that smile.

But he knew, after everything that had happened, that that time had passed. Getting close to that smile again would just open up new, ugly wounds and tear open old ones, and he already didn't have enough space left on his heart to make room for more damage.

"Yeah," he responded, giving her a shrug as he backed up from the bar. "Sure."

He didn't mean to sound as dry and toneless as he did, but his dark thoughts must have caught up to his voice, because he realized he actually sounded completely disinterested. He felt like a dick as soon as the words dripped from his lips, but especially so when he saw the brief flash of hurt and disappointment dance across Tifa's face as she stared back at him, somewhat stunned.

He turned away quickly, feeling his neck burn with a blend of inwardly directed fury and embarrassment. He made his way to the table where Denzel still sat with the girl, tapping on the boy's shoulder to get his attention.

"Come on, Denzel," he urged. "Let's go."

Denzel nodded, sliding out of the booth and pulling his jacket back on. "Bye, Marlene."

The girl, Marlene, gave Denzel a wave, but her eyes drifted up to Cloud. She stared at him for a long, hard moment, and Cloud had to admit that something in her dark brown eyes made him very uncomfortable.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Cloud quickly took Denzel by the shoulders, pushing him out of Seventh Heaven.

He didn't dare turn back, not to where Tifa Lockhart stood still behind the bar and not to anyone else inside.

---

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 | 5th March

Expressways and Storms

Cloud had difficulty concentrating on anything for the rest of the week, especially when Lazard finally called him on Tuesday morning, asking him to report back to Shinra HQ.

He couldn't tear his awkward reunion with Tifa from his mind. There weren't enough distractions in the world to get her out of his headspace, no matter how much television he tried to watch or how many video games he tried to play or how much drinking he did. His vision was still hazy and filled with ivory skin and ebony hair, with thick red lips and dark, scarlet eyes.

He turned over their meeting a thousand times in his head, re-envisioning the way that she'd approached him on the curb, his name falling from her tongue with the same smooth, lilting cadence he had heard from her all those years ago. He couldn't stop thinking about the sway of her hips as she walked or the strain of her breasts against her white blouse, couldn't stop replaying the way the sunlight danced in her hair as she glanced expectantly at him, her eyes widening as he pulled his helmet from his head.

He was mired in the way that his heart pounded when she poured him a drink, wondering when she had learned mixology. He couldn't climb his way out of how his first thought since reuniting with her - the fact that he thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on - had slipped beyond his lips without his consent. And he couldn't remove himself from how he became lost in the wistful hopefulness in her eyes that gently quested out to him, seeking more from that brief moment in time that they were reunited.

As Cloud rode Fenrir through Midgar's busy streets into Sector0, swearing at the backlog of early morning rush hour traffic and trying to find ways to weave through it, he found himself inwardly scowling at the way he'd handled his run-in with Tifa. From the moment he'd seen her name on the brochure, he'd known it would be a bad idea for him to make contact with her. His behavior, his uneven temperament, his wild wavering between flirtatious and aloof, had probably left her head spinning as much as it had left his own.

There was no getting around the fact that there was a massive crater in Cloud's heart that had once been occupied solely by Tifa Lockhart. She had been everything to him a decade ago. He would have given his life for her. He loved her more than he could remember loving anything at any other point in his life. She had made him feel ways and things that were otherworldly and foreign, feelings that had him floating as if he were untethered to the ground.

After they broke up, Cloud never loved another girl again. He dated a couple in Midgar during his early years with SOLDIER, women who mostly pursued him and who interested him briefly, but he could never find the same connection, the same sense of longing, the same antidote for the deep, aching ailment that persisted throughout his body ever since he'd lost her.

Seeing her again stirred those old feelings inside of him, had his body reacting viscerally, sweat pooling along his brow and the surface of his palms, his dick stiff in his pants and his legs trembling, his mouth moving in ways that felt slack-jacked and uneven.

It was pathetic, really.

Cloud realized one of his biggest problems in life was not thinking things through thoroughly. He acted on impulse. If he had been smart, he would have found another piano teacher somewhere in Midgar - there had to be dozens of them, he assumed - and sent Denzel there and called it a day. There was no fucking reason in the world for him to have contacted Tifa Lockhart.

How stupid he must have looked to her, trying to hide his identity, only to have her figure it out in a matter of hours. She had always been smart.

And he'd always been an idiot.

Cloud was pulling into Shinra's parking garage, flinching at the thought of how coldly he'd treated Tifa just before they separated that afternoon, before he and Denzel made their way out of the bar. He hadn't missed the way her eyes dulled and widened at his casual coolness, dashing away the aspirations that had risen in her bright, cherry-red orbs. As soon as he saw the look pass over her face, he had felt the guilt settle in deep, and he couldn't get out of Seventh Heaven fast enough.

For the last ten years, ever since he had been pulled away from her and sent under the frigid spray of a mako bath, it had been his way of coping with the world, of dealing with other people and handling the unpredictable rage of his emotions. He put up a steel barrier between him and everyone else, letting it refract the ice that had grown in his veins to keep people locked out.

Tifa was the last person he needed getting anywhere near his already wounded heart. He couldn't handle the way that she twisted up his insides and ripped them apart, couldn't live through the torment he'd experienced a decade ago.

Now, though, he was stuck seeing her at least once a week. As he killed Fenrir's engine and slid his goggles off, he found himself silently cursing Marle for suggesting her piano lessons in the first place, swearing at Denzel for getting into trouble, angry at Zack and Aerith for dying.

These thoughts soured his mood considerably as he made his way inside of the Shinra Tower. He ignored the looks of the other employees as he ventured toward the elevators, at the interest that his black contractor uniform drew or the speculation he saw in the facial expressions of everyone who made eye contact with him. Cloud wasn't sure if he was imagining things, but it seemed like everyone was staring right in his fucking face today, their faces pinched with disapproval and judgment.

Why couldn't everyone just mind their fucking business?

Director Lazard had asked that he report right to his office upon arrival, so Cloud took the elevator straight to the 49th floor, trying to kill the anger that was riding sidelong with his depression, and trying desperately to push the lingering images of Tifa out of his vision.

When he arrived, Lazard's secretary read him with a bored expression before she granted him entry to the Director's office. The sky was beginning to darken and hang overcast with clouds, and when Cloud entered, the office was shadowed.

The Director was standing by the wall of windows that overlooked the city to the East, his arms folded behind his back as he stared out at the scenery. At the sound of the door shutting behind Cloud, he turned, nodding his head before he gestured widely to his desk.

"Ah, Strife. Come, have a seat."

Cloud resisted the urge to sigh, silently crossing the room to sit in one of the chairs across from Lazard's desk. He dropped his hands onto the tops of his knees as he waited patiently, his eyes on Lazard's back as the man continued to entertain the window for a while.

Eventually, Lazard turned to him, heaving a bit of a sigh before he dropped into his wing-backed chair. He was dressed in a dark, navy blue three-piece suit, contrasted sharply by the white shirt he wore beneath. He steepled his hands in front of him, leaning forward a bit as his eyes met Cloud's.

"So, Cloud," he began, and Cloud chewed the inside of his mouth, trying to swallow all of the nasty thoughts that were threatening his tongue. "How are you doing?"

"I'm broke," Cloud spat.

Lazard cracked a brief smile, but he pulled it back, nodding his head slightly at Cloud's words.

"Well, I do apologize about that," he responded in a measured tone, though his voice was light. "I needed to give you a little time to cool off. Besides, if the executives did not see that you'd been properly handled after that mishap with Scarlet, there would be more than one form of hell to pay for all of us."

Cloud shrugged, leaning one elbow on the armrest. "Did you call me up for an assignment?"

Lazard held the ghost of the smile that was on his face, and picked up a black folder, dropping it in front of Cloud. "I did. Though, before we get on to that, I do want to communicate my concerns about your mental and emotional wellbeing, Cloud."

Here we go with this shit again.

Cloud rolled his eyes visibly, then looked down at his hands, clenching them tightly in his lap. He avoided looking up at Lazard, until the Director cleared his throat.

"Strife, I mean it," his voice had taken on a slightly more insistent chord. "I can't have you in the field if I am concerned about your decision-making skills and your emotional triggers. I need stability for these missions. You have always been one of our very best, but in the last year, I have grown worried about how you have chosen to handle certain situations."

If I'm so good, Cloud wanted to shout, then why am I being treated like a two-bit mercenary?

"I'm fine," was all he said instead, finally meeting eyes with Lazard, as if this were somehow going to convince him.

Lazard's sky blue eyes stared into Cloud's deeper cerulean for a moment, before he finally sat back in concession, lifting the folder in front of him, displaying the Shinra crest and a large red stamp that read CLASSIFIED.

"Very well," he conceded. "I suppose I'll have to take your word for it. At any rate, just to be safe, I'm partnering you with Kunsel for this mission."

Cloud was rolling his eyes again.

Lazard flipped open the folder, ignoring Cloud's petulance. "This mission is highly classified. You'll be escorting General Heidegger to Fort Condor. However, you will also be escorting a very large amount of Mythril. Heidegger is heading there to negotiate the territory south of the Fort to the end of the continent. The Condor Tribe has been blocking the routes there, and it has made trade and commerce with Mideel exceptionally difficult, not to mention, has impeded Shinra's plans for the reactor there."

"This sounds like grunt work," Cloud complained, now folding his arms over his chest, narrowing his eyes at Lazard. He ignored the comment about the reactor. In his years with Shinra and SOLDIER, Cloud had seen the erection of plenty of mako reactors in cities and villages around the world where there had previously been none. It was standard operating procedure at this point for Shinra to expand their life-sucking machinations further wherever they could.

"This is an important mission," Lazard responded. "Heidegger was very particular about the assistance he was provided with. He'd requested active duty SOLDIERs, but I'm afraid I cannot spare any at this moment, not with things beginning to escalate again in Wutai."

"Fine," Cloud huffed, already tired of this conversation. He leaned forward and snatched the folder off of Lazard's desk. "When do I leave?"

Lazard looked down at his watch. "Now."

---

Although it was barely ten in the morning, it was dark from the fat puffy rain clouds in the sky when Cloud left the Shinra Tower in the passenger seat of a black armored jeep that Kunsel was driving. His comrade drove the vehicle around to the front of the building, and Cloud hopped out when he spotted Heidegger emerge from the tall, gleaming glass doors. He was instantly annoyed when the clouds in the sky opened up and pelted him with rain.

Heidegger, who was tall and barrel-chested, his thick dark hair streaked with gray and his face haggard and marred with scars, was stone-faced as he approached the vehicle. Cloud tried to concentrate, flinging the many distractions that constantly plagued his mind - Tifa, his grief, his shitty parenting - and pulled the door open for Heidegger, who regarded him with a scowl before he slipped into the backseat.

Cloud closed the door behind him. The back of the vehicle had already been secured with trunks of Mythril, and as soon as Cloud slid into the front passenger seat again, Kunsel was pulling away from the curb.

"Sir," Kunsel acknowledged their superior, glancing at Heidegger through the rearview.

"Hmph," Heiddeger grunted from the backseat. "Let's make this as smooth and quick as possible. It pains me greatly that the President thinks this is a worthwhile expenditure of my time."

With that, he slid the divider between the front and back seats shut, cutting off contact between him and the two ex-SOLDIERs up front.

Kunsel just shrugged, leaning forward to turn the radio up a little, an old alternative rock song gently wafting through the stereos.

It made Cloud wince as he settled into his seat, watching the landscape around him shift as Kunsel took the expressway that led from the plate to the ground below, out of Midgar. The band was one he had listened to as a youth, one of the more easy-listening types that he'd followed. He'd mostly liked them for their lyrical versatility; their songs had always been about topics that hit close to home for him - loneliness, depression, heartache, and identity crises. All things he had dealt with during his adolescence, especially those early years in Midgar, when he'd really struggled to figure himself out, barely graduating from high school by the skin of his teeth.

But then, at the end of that summer, he'd moved back to Nibelheim with his mother and met Tifa, and everything changed.

Despite his best efforts, Cloud found himself thinking about her again. Even as Kunsel sped along the highways south, passing the juncture for Kalm, Cloud saw none of the landscape around him, his vision bordered by the lines of her face and the curves of her body. She was infecting him, and it was disturbing him the way that those dark carmine eyes had seen right through him, how they had hooked onto his heart and reeled him in. Cloud found himself annoyed that Kunsel had been given the responsibility of driving, because sitting here in the passenger seat with his hands folded in his lap and nothing to do, Cloud realized that his mind was running into places that created a thick ache inside of him.

He found himself drifting into the past, recalling his memories of the summer before everything had cratered. He remembered Tifa's sadness as the spring had faded, the depression that she had been dealing with that made the end of the school year almost impossible for her to deal with, and he remembered how hard he had worked to make every moment meaningful, how he tried to put a smile on her face whenever he could.

And he remembered the way that her father watched him like a hawk, the scornful looks he would give him whenever he stumbled onto his front porch in a drunken rage, shouting into the wind when he caught him walking Tifa home. He even remembered the night that Brian Lockhart had shown up at his house, whiskey leaking from his pores as he threatened his mother with his finger in her face until Cloud had intervened.

He flinched at the sting of that particular memory, shaking his head out and trying to focus his vision as he looked out of the window. It was one of the worst memories of that summer, even though it paled in comparison to that rainy night in late August.

The skies opened up even further then, as if hearing his thoughts, the rain hitting the windows in thick slats. It seemed that rain was associated with all of his core memories, every moment, good or bad.

He'd met Tifa in the rain.

He'd lost Tifa in the rain.

Zack and Aerith died in the rain.

At that thought, Cloud tucked his chin to his chest, letting his eyes fall closed. The thick, paralyzing grief that was still wrapped around his cerebral cortex was not helped by the fact that Cloud realized that they were on the very same highway where it had happened, just over a year ago.

.

.

.

"Thanks for the ride, man."

Cloud just shrugged, one hand on the steering wheel as he navigated the Shinra-issued sedan over the stripe of highways that led from Junon across the hills that cut through the Eastern Continent, back to Midgar. It was raining heavily now, and the sky was darkening as the late hours progressed. It was not the best time of day to be journeying these parts - they were only a few miles from the marshes, where some nasty creatures lived - but their travels had been slowed by the dramatic shifts in weather that had not been on the news reports that morning.

Cloud thought meteorologists were a joke. If only he had a job where he could get it wrong fifty percent of the time.

Zack was sitting up front beside him, while Aerith and Denzel rode in the backseat. Denzel was staring out of the glass, watching the hills and the valleys of the East roll past, the thick rain obscuring the view as the sky darkened further.

"SOLDIER let you borrow this car?" Zack asked, running his fingers over the Shinra emblem that was emblazoned into the glove compartment in front of him. It was a luxury model, one from the newest line that had not yet been released to the public and had been reserved mostly for top brass Shinra employees. Cloud nodded, checking his side-view mirror as he changed lanes.

"Yeah," he answered. "Basically had to beg Lazard to let me use it. If I wasn't picking you up, he would have said no for sure."

Zack laughed, stretching a bit in the spacious front seat, curving his arms behind his head. "Why don't you just buy a car, man?"

Cloud tossed his shoulders in a shrug. "I like my bike."

Zack laughed, and Cloud narrowed his eyes as they entered a tunnel that neared the Mythril Mines, carved into a huge expanse of mountain that led to the opposite side of the continent. Right at the mouth of the tunnel was an oversized green sign that announced: "MIDGAR SWAMPS AHEAD. ZOLOM INFESTATIONS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

"Dad?" Denzel called from the backseat. "What's a zolom?"

Zack let out a little chuckle, the vehicle encased in darkness as they entered the tunnel, illuminated only by the small mako-powered lanterns that had been embedded into the rock. "It's a huge, nasty snake, Denzel. Definitely not the kind of monster you want to find yourself on the wrong side of. It has a terrible attack called beta, that will burn you alive if it casts its magic on you."

"Zack," Aerith chided.

"Ew," Denzel sniffed. "That sounds gross. Are we gonna see one?"

"I sure hope not," Zack answered. "The marshes are on the left, on the other side of this tunnel. The zoloms usually only come out if they detect people or animals encroaching on their swamps. They're very territorial. But Shinra built a protective barrier around that part of the expressway, so even if a zolom appears, they won't be able to get to the cars."

"That's a relief, isn't it, sweetie?" Aerith said, patting Denzel's hand gently.

Cloud stared ahead into the darkness, his hands gripping the steering wheel carefully as he drove. This was one of his least favorite places to drive. Despite the barrier that had been built, he always felt his nerves heat up when he passed through this area. He'd heard enough horror stories of men who'd confronted zoloms and had either been eaten alive, burnt to a crisp, or tossed by a flick of the beast's tail until they smacked into broken heaps against the nearby crags.

"How was Junon?" Cloud asked to push the terrifying thoughts from his mind and redirect the nature of the conversation.

"Oh, it's a lovely city," Aerith answered. "We had a great time. Upper Junon is so much cleaner than Midgar, believe it or not. And the lower city is very quaint. But, my favorite part was the airship! We saw it at the docks, by the Sister Ray cannon. Oh, how I would love to fly in an airship like that one day."

"I told ya, babe," Zack piped from the front, "I'll take you one day. You and Denzel. Promise."

Aerith hummed happily behind them, and Cloud focused his attention on the road as they emerged from the tunnel again.

The night sky had grown even darker, and Cloud saw the flashes of lightning brighten the sky near the horizon. The rain was torrential now, and it fell so heavy and thick that it blurred Cloud's vision through the windshield, even with the wipers turned up to the highest setting.

Cloud had to slow the vehicle to a crawl to navigate safely, trying to avoid hydroplaning on the slick roads and sending them careening into a ditch on the side of the road. He leaned forward as he drove, turning his headlights up as he squinted to follow the painted strips along the center of the highway.

"What awful weather," Aerith mused aloud. "I wonder what has got the Planet so upset to unleash her tears this way."

"No kidding," Zack added.

"Can't you hear the Planet, mom?" Denzel asked, and Cloud couldn't help but smirk at the boy's endless curiosity.

"I can," Aerith admitted, turning to her son in the backseat and offering him a warm smile. "But she doesn't tell me why she's hurting, or what the source is. I just hear the cries."

There was no opportunity for Denzel to respond, because there was suddenly a loud screech in the distance. Cloud chanced taking his eyes off of the road just long enough to scan the marshes to his left. With the darkness and the thick rain, it was almost impossible to see the murky waters, let alone anything that was transpiring beyond the transparent barrier.

"Shit," Zack cursed at his side. "That sounded like a zolom. Just keep driving."

Cloud resisted the urge to say something sarcastic in response to the obviousness of that statement, instead turning his eyes back to the road as he gently lowered his toe to the gas, increasing the vehicle's speed just a little. Beyond the fiberglass barricade that Shinra had erected around the marsh, Cloud could just barely make out the outline of thick, hazy black shapes.

"You might wanna step on the gas a little bit, Cloud," Zack advised nervously at his side. "I think I see one of them - "

It was the last thing that Cloud heard before the zolom crashed into the glass, sending a portion of the barrier splintering away from its foundation and over the road. It sent the vehicle into a tailspin, and Cloud could hear Aerith's sharp scream as the sedan flipped over and began to roll.

He heard shouts, vaguely hearing Zack call his son's name at his side, but blood was pooling in his eyes by the time the vehicle rolled to a stop on its roof, just at the side of the road. He could hear the frightened whimpers and cries all throughout the inside of the car, but he had smacked his head so hard against the window when he had been jostled that his ears were ringing.

Upside down, Cloud tried to look up out of the window to assess the damage and to figure out their next move, but his eyes caught on the sight of a portion of the fiberglass divider cracking and crashing to the ground.

And his eyes widened in petrified horror when he heard the sharp, guttural scream, seeing the zolom rise up from the marsh, its tongue that was as long as their car slithering out of its mouth hungrily.

"Zack - "

.

.

.

"Cloud!"

Cloud snapped out of his reverie, not even realizing that he had been staring into the distance but not seeing anything but the past in front of him, a dark, stormy night where he had been filled with more abject terror than he'd ever felt in his life. The sharp sound of Kunsel's voice quickly tore him away from that broken and diseased memory, and he clenched the side of his temple as his eyes readjusted, now seeing the rain on an overcast morning rather than a dark and dreadful night, a gleaming condor just beyond.

"You alright, man?" Kunsel asked, and Cloud turned to look at him, feeling the ache in his skull, dumbfounded. "You spaced out or something. We're almost at Fort Condor. Heidegger wants you to carry the Mythril while I stand watch."

Cloud shook his head out, leaning it back against the headrest as his present reality returned to him and the ghosts of his past faded into the horizon. Kunsel navigated the jeep over an off-terrain road, leading them closer to the Fort.

But Cloud just stared at the droplets of water as they continued to fall outside of the window, tears from the heavens that painted the canvas of his terrible memories from the past.

Rain.

Cloud hated the rain.

---

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 | 10th March

Bloodstains on Old Scars

Tifa sat at a booth in Seventh Heaven's bar, a planning book open in front of her, her pen in one hand and a hot cup of green tea in the other. She had given up coffee a while ago; caffeine flared the inflammation in her joints badly, while the herbs in green tea soothed it. It had been a disappointing lifestyle change, but one that she had slowly adjusted to as time went on.

The pages in front of her were blank, and Denzel would be arriving for his second lesson in less than two hours. She needed to plan out her time with him, but she was driven to distraction, the way that she had been that entire week after she had run into Cloud Strife again.

Cloud. When he had pulled the motorcycle helmet away from his face, Tifa had heard her breath catch, had felt it scrape against the back of her throat. Despite her suspicions from her conversation with Denzel, she had not truly, deep in her heart, expected to be reunited with him. She hadn't been prepared for it.

She had thought she would never see Cloud Strife again, and given the nature of her condition, she had thought it was wise that she didn't.

She thought back on the many, many conversations she'd had with her physician and specialist over the years, even with the therapist she began to see at her doctor's behest. Whenever the tears would spill blood onto her blouse or the sharp aches would flare, whenever her vision blurred or her brain felt muddled and confused, the questions would always be the same.

Can you think back on the emotional trauma?

What caused it? Or who?

Cloud, Tifa had always thought in pure misery, unable to put voice to the words. It was always Cloud.

Cloud hadn't been the reason. He hadn't been the direct cause, hadn't torn her heart out himself. It had been external forces, Tifa knew, forces that were dangerous and that she had dared and challenged until everything blew up in her face. But Cloud had been the heart of it, the source.

He was the only boy she had ever loved, the only boy who had ever made her feel things, who had made her feel alive.

It had been one year that they shared together, a year that for Tifa, was fraught with heartaches and miseries. Her mother had died that year, and the school year had ended on a terrible note, leaving Tifa feeling shamefaced, lonely, and abandoned. Her father had spooled into an even deeper pit of alcoholic rage, and there had been no one there for her.

No one except Cloud, and when she had been forced away from him, she was truly alone.

There'd never been anyone else who could fill the void in her soul the way he had. Cloud had ignited something inside of her, and when he was gone, that flame was forever extinguished.

She'd dated boys in Midgar, long after she'd moved there for university. It had taken almost three years for her to try, but in the end, the pursuit was fruitless. They never went farther than a few dates; not even the violinist she'd dated when she first joined the Philharmonic could inspire much more than a kiss on the cheek.

It had been a lonely, long ten years, years where her only companion soon became pain and soreness and the bloodstains on her cheeks.

Tifa sighed, dropping her pen to the heavy wooden table, tearing her gaze away from the blank lesson plan. She let her gaze drift to the window, watching the cars roll by on the street outside, the Sunday morning sunlight blanketing everything beyond the glass in white, gleaming shimmers. Cloud had been the only one, Tifa realized, and long ago she had given up, resigning herself to a life of loneliness, content with only her friends to keep her company.

Besides, who would want her now, in this broken state?

But Cloud was back in her life, even if it was just peripherally, even if he was cold and distant. The man who had sat across from her at her bar last Sunday was nothing like the boy she had fallen in love with all those years ago. That boy had been sweet and charming, had been equal parts flirtatiously bold and endearingly shy, had been daring and reckless and so very, very soft.

This man was anxious and antsy, lied and was shifty, had flirted for a moment before turning back to an icy exterior before he made himself scarce.

She surmised that perhaps the years had not been much kinder to him than they had to her.

Thinking about this, she felt a sharp prickle at the corner of her eye, and she winced, gasping when the first drop of blood hit the white page of her lesson planner. She dropped her head to her hands, feeling the sparkling shimmer, sharp and burning against her retinas, and the first glimmer of stardust joined the puddle of blood on the page, causing Tifa to cry out in pain.

"Tifa!"

She snapped her head up, wiping at the corner of her eyes, inhaling deep and hard to fight the sting back and stop the tears. She saw Barret towering over her; he had pulled his shades off, and his hazel eyes were alight with concern.

Tifa hadn't seen her father in close to eight years. He still lived in Nibelheim, but it was safe to say that she was by now estranged from him. When she had first moved to Midgar for university, she had tried to cling to her relationship with him, even though she had been so angry at him, so terribly hurt by everything that had happened that summer. But she hung on to him; he was her only living family left. But as his pressure on her grew, as his drinking made him prone to outbursts and anger that stung her even from thousands of miles away, Tifa began to distance herself from him, and he eventually decided that he was going to cut her off if she didn't live her life the way he wanted her to.

Barret had come to fill the void that had been left by the distance that grew between her and her father. He treated her with the same protection and care and doting concern that a real father might, had looked out for her for as long as she could remember, once they had become friends. He was one of the first people in her life to learn about her disease, and he was one of the reasons she had been able to survive it as long as she had.

He ran to the bar, his boots heavy across the floorboards, and Tifa wiped more blood from her eyes as she watched him run a clean rag under the faucet before he returned to her side. She realized then that Marlene was with him, and the little girl had stopped to stand a few feet away, her eyes wide and sad as she balled her hands up into tiny fists at her sides. Tifa blinked at her, realizing that her vision was blurred and hazy around the edges.

"Tifa, are you okay?"

Tifa started to answer, her lips trembling, when Barret crossed in front of her, dropping to one knee. He was so tall that even crouching he still towered over Tifa where she sat in the booth.

He held up the warm rag close to her face, but did not touch her. Carefully, she took it from his hand and pressed it to both of her eyes, wiping away the blood and the residue of star-tears.

"Sweet Shiva, Tifa. Ya had me scared for a minute there. Been a while since I seen you have one of those episodes. Are you relapsing?"

Tifa turned away from him, looking down at the rag to find the splotches of red that were littered by a glittering spackle of dust. How could such an ugly illness produce something so beautiful?

The truth was, Tifa was afraid she was relapsing. The past week, all of her pains had doubled. The stiffness was almost impossible to ignore as she struggled to mix drinks and write legibly in her ledger and even practice notes across her keys on the piano upstairs. Her vision was blurred at times, causing her to stop whatever she was doing so she could blink and refocus.

All of it had started when Cloud walked out of her bar that afternoon with Denzel in tow.

Cloud.

Barret rose, then stuffed himself into the seat in the booth across from her, his eyes leveling a serious, concerned stare at her. Tifa studied his face, noting the twin scars over his right eye and the pinched wrinkles in his forehead. As soon as he sat, Marlene finally came over, and Tifa felt a bubble burst with affection inside of her when the little girl wrapped her arms around her.

"I don't like it when you cry," Marlene whined in a small voice as Tifa hugged her back.

"I'm okay," Tifa lied softly.

"Marlene," Barret started. "Jessie is gonna be here soon to get the afternoon rush started. Why don't you go check and make sure there's no dishes in the sink, and that she has everything she needs behind the counter to open up for the day?"

"Okay, daddy," Marlene agreed, and she released Tifa, turning away to skip behind the bar.

Barret immediately returned the focus of his attention back on Tifa. " This got anything to do with that blond idiot who was in here last week?"

Tifa sat up a little straighter, her eyes widening. Despite his rough and sometimes graceless exterior, Barret was one of the most sensitive and perceptive individuals that Tifa knew. She shouldn't be surprised that he had already read this situation down to its last letter.

Tifa sighed, looking away from the warmth that was pooled in his narrow eyes, glancing instead at the bloody, shimmery rag and the ruined lesson plan.

"He is... Someone from my past. How did you know?"

Barret shrugged. "I could see it in the stupid ass look on his face, in the way that you were making eyes at him when you mixed him a drink. And I ain't never see you give anyone a Cosmo Canyon on the house in my life. That shit's expensive."

Tifa just laughed humorlessly at that.

"An old flame?" Barret asked softly, crossing his arms across his massive chest, causing his biceps to bulge and the flaming skull tattoo etched across one arm to stretch with his skin.

"Something like that," Tifa admitted. "We have… a very troubled history. It has a lot to do with my father, and my old town… things that I like to leave in the past. I haven't seen him in ten years."

"If he's gonna be making you sick," Barret began, "Then maybe you shouldn't be teaching his kid. You know what the doctors say about triggers."

Tifa sighed, pushing the soiled rag to the side and reaching for her tea again, hoping it would alleviate the throb that was suddenly flaring her shoulders.

"I don't want to punish the boy because of my history with Cloud," Tifa responded. "Speaking of, I really need to finish my plan for his lesson. He'll be here in another hour or so."

Barret leveled a stern, unconvinced expression at her, but ultimately, he nodded. Tifa admired that Barret always respected that she was grown and let her make her own decisions, no matter how much he disagreed with them or how much he worried they might hurt her in the end.

It was a courtesy she realized she could never expect from her own father.

"Well, alright. Just be careful. I don't trust nobody who walks around with a haircut like that, spikes all over the place like he just rolled out of bed and then dumped a bucket of wax into his hair. If he does anything to hurt you, Tifa, I'm gonna shove my foot so far up his ass he'll be spittin' shoelaces for the next two weeks."

Tifa winced at this vulgarity, but she found herself laughing, just as Barret pushed up to his feet and left her alone to finish her plans.

---

Cloud dropped Denzel off that afternoon, and Tifa had once again stood on Seventh Heaven's steps and watched him disappear on his motorcycle, a thick cloud of exhaust left in his wake.

She could only shake her head, feeling a new ache pulse in the center of her chest.

Maybe Barret was right. Maybe this was all just a really bad idea.

Nonetheless, she worked with Denzel through their second lesson. She had the opportunity to spend a little more time talking to him that afternoon, and she learned that he loved all kinds of music. It brought a smile to her face when he talked about how his mother would play classical music early on Saturday mornings in their home when she cleaned, and that she believed it helped her flowers grow. Tifa could only sit back in fascination and listen as he described the garden that his mother kept behind the house, and the way that she left potted plants and flowers on nearly every available surface in their home.

It filled Tifa with another layer of heavy sadness to realize that this little boy had already lost so much. Tifa had been seventeen when her mother had died, and it had been a devastation like none other that she could compare to. She could not imagine what it must feel like to lose both parents, and at such a young, tender age.

She wanted to know more about Denzel and what had happened to his parents, but she didn't dare ask him. Maybe it was something that she could talk to Cloud about, if she could get him to sit still and look her in the eye for longer than half a second.

She tried to banish Cloud from her mind, focusing on her lesson with Denzel. For today, she decided to focus more on his hand placement and the positioning over the keys, modeling with the curve of her own fingers and then gently correcting his form as he practiced after her. She explained the difference between the white and black keys, the positioning of the high and low notes, and she hummed in a low, sing-song voice as she showed him the musical scale, pleased with how he picked up and memorized what she taught him after only a couple of tries.

It soon came time for their lesson to end, and Tifa walked Denzel downstairs. The bar's tables were filled with about a half a dozen patrons, and Jessie was wiping the counter down as they emerged.

Tifa watched as Marlene waved from a booth where she was playing with several dolls on the table, flagging Denzel down. Tifa smiled and joined Jessie at the bar as he went to Marlene, indulging her quietly as she showed him her toys.

"Marlene just loves that little boy," Jessie told her as soon as she approached. "You wouldn't believe how much she talked about him this afternoon. Speaking of, I think you're on babysitting duty tonight. Barret left a little while ago with Biggs and Wedge, said they had some business to take care of."

Tifa shrugged, always happy to have Marlene's company. "Biggs, huh? He's been coming around a lot lately. Is he still working at that garage in Sector5?"

Amazingly, Jessie actually blushed. "Yes, he is. He's also started volunteer teaching at the Leaf House."

"Leaf House?" Tifa repeated.

"Mhm. It's an orphanage. Biggs is really a great guy, Tifa. I usually don't date them that wholesome, but there is something really sexy about him."

Tifa nodded with a smile, her eyes drifting back to Denzel. At the mention of the orphanage, she thought about how Cloud had adopted this child after his parents had died. Despite his cool temperament and his blasé, devil-may-care attitude, she found it an incredibly selfless and compassionate thing to do, and for some reason, she felt the dull, throbbing ache on the left side of her chest again, her heart straining as it pumped blood throughout her system.

"Hey, Jessie," she began. "Have you seen his father? Our lesson actually went over a little today, and he's still not here."

"Who, that blond cutie?" Jessie replied with a thick laugh. "No, not yet, and I was looking for him and that stupid hot motorcycle. You really know how to pick them, Tifa."

"Jessie…"

"I mean it," her friend cut off. "I saw the way he was looking at you the last time he was here. It was almost like he'd already known you."

Tifa closed her eyes, feeling dread rake along the lines of her nerves. She tossed her head to one side.

"Jessie… I do know him. I dated him ten years ago."

Jessie slammed her palm against the counter in a highly dramatic fashion, almost startling Tifa. "I knew it. That man had the look of a jilted ex-lover written all over his face. What did you do to him, Tifa? I didn't ever take you for that kind of a heartbreaker. No wonder he hightailed it out of here so fast."

Tifa shook her head, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. "No, listen. It's… very complicated, Jessie. I didn't break his heart. Well, not intentionally. It was just…"

She trailed off, realizing how ridiculous her words sounded, and how Jessie was likely going to misconstrue all of this. She sighed and let it drop.

"It doesn't matter," she continued. "What's done is done; it's in the past now."

"Try telling that to Baby Blue Eyes," Jessie responded with another husky chortle, just as Tifa heard the rumbles of a motorcycle engine outside.

She wasted no time maneuvering from behind the bar, ignoring both Jessie's continued laughter and the burn in her knees as she crossed the bar. She offered Denzel a smile and waved at him to stay where he was, while she stepped outside, feeling the cold March wind instantly sting her nerves.

Cloud was not wearing the helmet this time. Instead, he wore only a pair of riding goggles, and he slid them off of his head and stashed them somewhere on his bike. He was dressed in dark clothing with a leather jacket over it all, and suddenly Tifa found herself drifting back in time to the first afternoon she had met him, when they had been standing in the rain, and he'd taken off his leather jacket so that he could offer her his hoodie to shield her from the wet weather.

The memory pulled a deep throb from the center of her body that had her warming all over, a feeling she hadn't experienced in a long, long time.

She realized that the ache was growing as he swung his leg over the bike's seat and dismounted, hesitating visibly with a start when he realized that she was standing there, waiting for him. She watched him pull his long, graceful fingers through his fluffy spiked hair, and Tifa thought back to Barret's earlier silly comments about his hair being full of wax.

Tifa knew from intimate experience that his hair was naturally wild like that, and that it was one of the softest, downiest things that she had ever gotten her hands on, like the feathers of a chocobo.

She held her breath as he slowly approached, his strides long and purposeful. She found her eyes drifting to trail the lines of his body, watching the way that his hips moved, and the narrow definition of his waist that she could see even though he was fully dressed.

It sparked hot and painful memories.

God, how she had loved to stare at that long, angular torso, following its trail down and down and down until -

"Hey, Tifa."

His voice was soft, and it startled her out of a treacherous daydream. She glanced up at him again, peeling her line of sight away from his body to meet his eyes, finding cobalt at war with a sparked rim of viridian. He blinked once, and the way that the sunlight hit his irises had her seeing white shimmers, as if she were staring at the starry night sky above Nibelheim again.

It was enough to send the throb that pulsed across her entire body and ached inside of her heart into a full-blown jackhammering of sensation.

"Cloud," she finally acknowledged in response.

She detected the intensity with which he was staring at her, but when her eyes focused and held his, he quickly turned away. She felt disappointed by the loss of those deep, oceanic pools, and it only made the ache in her chest all the more painful.

"Is Denzel ready?" he asked, looking down at a gloved hand.

Tifa bristled a little, already detecting in his tone how he seemed ready to flee. She folded her hands in front of her calmly.

"He is," she replied. "But he's playing with Marlene. They've taken a liking to each other, it seems. Why don't you come inside for a bit? We can talk about his progress today."

Cloud tossed his head, looking away. "I don't know, Tifa. I really don't have time - "

"Please," Tifa interrupted, disturbed by how she found herself pleading, not even understanding why her voice had come out so shrill and desperate. "I can make you another drink, on the house."

He looked up at her, his mouth parting as if he were going to say something, but no words crawled out, and Tifa found herself focusing on his lips, remembering long ago the first time she had felt them against hers and realizing that she would give almost anything for that feeling again.

"It would be nice to catch up with you," she tacked on without even thinking about the words before they fell from her lips.

What was she doing?

She wanted to take the words back, even though she knew that she never could. But Cloud was looking back up at her, and she saw something break down in the way that his blue eyes glittered at her before he nodded slowly and began to climb the steps in concession.

Her heart was now pounding, making the throb it lived with twinge across her nerve endings with even greater pain. She willed it away, leading Cloud inside of Seventh Heaven. When they entered, she gestured to the booth in the far corner by the window, the one where she usually sat while she went over her ledgers or planned her piano lessons for upcoming clients. It was farther away from the most populated parts of the dining room, and offered a little more privacy.

"You can sit there," she told him. "I'll be back in a moment."

She went behind the bar to fix them each another drink, this time opting for straight whiskey, hoping it might tear down both of their defenses just enough to facilitate a somewhat normal conversation. Mercifully, Jessie was working a table and was not at the bar to speculate or harass. Tifa watched as Cloud bent down next to Denzel to tell him something, before he ruffled the kid's hair and then made his way to the booth she'd shown him.

Cute.

Trying to will her hands to cease their trembling, Tifa carefully carried the glasses over to the booth, and slid in the seat across from him, offering him his drink.

Instantly, she was reminded of days of sitting across from him in booths at a diner on the other side of the Planet, when he had been lankier and his eyes had been full of mischief and merriment, and not despondency and disinterest.

He took the glass and stared down into it. "Smells strong. What is this?"

"Hagur's Reserve," Tifa replied, taking her own glass in hand.

Cloud lifted his chin with a little more interest at this. "Hagur's, huh? That's the brewery my mom used to work at."

"I remember," Tifa responded. "Barret really likes imported whiskeys, and it seems to please our clientele. We get a lot of Shinra employees and working-class types who enjoy variety. When I first started working here, there were no imports from Nibelheim. So I added it to our menu."

Cloud nodded, but he said nothing, instead lowering his eyes to his drink while he brought it up for his first sip.

The conversation stalled from there, and Tifa used the opportunity to memorize and admire his face while he continued to stare into the amber liquid in front of him. She was amazed at how boyish he still appeared. Not much had changed about him, aside from perhaps the sharper cut of his jaw that betrayed a little more maturity than the soft youthfulness of his cheeks that she'd remembered. His skin was still so pale that she could see the shimmers of blood that colored him beneath, and the faint dusting of light pink freckles across his cheeks.

She remembered tracing those freckles beneath her fingertips once, long, long ago, connecting them into the shapes of the constellations they had stared up at under the sky the first time he had pressed himself inside of her.

The intrusiveness of that memory instantly had Tifa blushing, and she brought her glass up to her lips for a careful but deep sip.

She put her tumbler down, feeling the alcohol burn across the upper half of her body after she'd swallowed that first gulp down. Cloud still had his eyes averted, still seemed content to remain silent as they sat there.

She cleared her throat carefully. "So… "

"Denzel's lesson?" he prompted when her voice drifted, and Tifa did not miss the way that his eyes darted to the door before they came back to her face.

He is really in a hurry to get out of here, she realized, and she wondered with a stabbing sadness why he was so eager to be away from her.

Did he know that something was wrong with her? That she was broken and useless, damaged and unlovable?

Was he still angry at her for what had happened?

He probably hated her.

"Yes," she responded to his query. "He did very well today, Cloud. You should be proud of him. Today, I reviewed his hand placement and positioning, and we talked about the keys and the scale. He picked up everything very quickly. He is a bright child."

Cloud nodded, and she could tell he was digesting this information simply because she was presenting it and not because he was particularly interested.

"His parents must have had some sort of gift or inclination," she went on gently. "He spoke about his mother a little bit, today. She sounds like she was a wonderful person."

Cloud only grunted in response, bringing his glass up for another sip.

"What happened to them?" she found herself daring to press.

Cloud shook his head, drinking again and looking away. "They had an accident," he deadpanned. "And they died."

Tifa straightened in her seat. It wasn't much, but she could tell from the way that his eyes narrowed into a hurt expression that the question had upset him, and she decided to back off.

She sipped a little bit more, the alcohol warming her even further, and she watched as Cloud's eyes drifted across the room then to where Denzel sat. Desperate to keep him close, she tried to push the conversation on.

"And how have you been?" she asked him. "It's been so long. What has life been like for you?"

She watched him sit back against the booth, and something like annoyance rippled across his features. Somehow, his brow became even more pinched.

"I don't know, Tifa," he answered, his voice almost exasperated. "It hasn't been anything worth discussing. I've been in SOLDIER for the last ten years, though I've been a contractor for them for the last three."

She offered him a small smile, hoping it would encourage him to keep talking, to lower the barrier he'd put up between them.

"I remember some of my friends back in Nibelheim calling me and telling me that you'd been drafted," she replied. "You never seemed like the kind of guy who would deal well with authority, but I always knew you'd be great."

He blew past her last statement. "Oh, yeah? You used to talk to your friends back home on the phone when you moved to Midgar?"

"Sure."

"So why didn't you ever call me, Tifa?" he suddenly demanded. "Or respond to my letters? Or my emails?"

Tifa sat back, her mouth dropping open, stunned and completely unprepared for the unexpected, dramatic shift in conversation, for the wild nature of his questions. She blinked, unsure of how to respond or react.

She found herself quickly breathing harder, her heart racing, her entire chest hurting with pressure as if a ton of weight were sitting on it.

Cloud was swiftly shaking his head. "Sorry," he blurted. "I shouldn't have - I didn't mean - No. It's nothing."

Tifa watched in amazement as Cloud slid out of the booth, rising to his feet. He didn't meet her eyes, instead looking down at his hand as he absently pulled at his glove.

"I need to get going," he told her. "I'll, uh, see you next week."

His eyes never met hers as he turned away to fetch Denzel, and she found herself aching for another glimpse into those deep, ultramarine pools as she watched Cloud and Denzel slip out of Seventh Heaven together.

As soon as they were gone, Tifa turned and fled into the back kitchens of Seventh Heaven, cornering herself into a stockroom as she felt the burn well up in the corner of her eyes, and she cried heavy droplets of blood and thick, shining, twinkling stardust that slid through her fingers and stung her tear ducts as if sand had been kicked into her eyes.

---

[ μ ] - εγλ - 1996 | 27th September

Sidewalk Strolls

"Cloud? Cloud, wake up, please. Time to get up."

Cloud yawned, rolling over on his bed in the small room on the second floor of the house he shared with his mother, Claudia. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, opening them to find his mother standing over him, her hands on her hips.

He smiled instantly. His mother was the one person in his world who could never fail to light up everything around him, no matter what he was feeling inside or how harshly the world treated him. He'd had a difficult youth growing up in Midgar, a big city that was busy and loud and content to chew up and spit out introverted loners like himself.

In many ways, Cloud was glad to be out of Midgar. It was a city that he never thought he or his mother were suited for, despite the fact that he had grown up there, right under the influence of the Shinra Electric Power Company, that towered over all of them like a powerful, knowing sentinel. In those days, his mother had worked for Shinra, a secretary in one of the customer service offices. They had moved there when Cloud was still an infant, and it wasn't until much later that Claudia's shame of being abandoned by his father and being a single, teenaged mother were her primary motivations for them leaving Nibelheim all those years ago.

In hindsight, Cloud wondered what life would have been like for him had he grown up in this small, backwater village. It was quiet and dull compared to Midgar, but Cloud didn't mind the quiet so much, though the boredom was a bit more than he could handle and had him itching to do something with his free time, things that would likely get him into trouble. But everyone knew each other here, and Cloud figured that was something that he wouldn't have liked if he had grown up here and gone to school with all the same stupid kids. He'd probably end up fighting every last one of them every day for his entire schooling career. At least Midgar allowed for a small degree of anonymity. Sure, he'd gotten into plenty of fights and had been suspended from school more times than he could count, but his high school had graduated hundreds of kids and not dozens, and most of his transgressions were soon forgotten by anyone who mattered.

He shifted on the bed and sat up, rubbing his neck as he glanced up at his mother and the disapproving look on her face. He grimaced through the rim of sleep that still tried to hold onto him.

"What?" he finally asked her.

"Cloud," her voice was gentle but slightly scolding. "It is almost eleven in the morning. You cannot continue to spend the majority of your days sleeping, and then thinking you are going to stay up all night watching TV or surfing the internet. You need to find work, or decide on what you are going to do with yourself, but this isn't going to continue."

He sighed, cradling his head in his hand. This had been an ongoing point of contention between him and his mother since before they had even left Midgar. He looked up at her, swallowing back his annoyance.

"I am looking for work, Mom," he complained, shaking his head with a pout. "It's just… there's nothing to do in this town. Nobody is hiring."

Claudia sighed, and she sat next to him on the bed. She dropped a reassuring hand to his knee.

"I hate to say this, Cloud," she began, "But the reactor is always hiring. I'm sure Shinra can help you find something safe to do there. That is, if you can't find anything else."

Cloud winced, looking down at his sheets.

"I don't like it either," his mother said. "But you really need to consider your options. Oh, sweetheart, I would just be so happy if you would consider going to college instead."

"Not interested," Cloud responded at once.

Claudia sighed, pushing back up to her feet. "Fine. Well, you'll have to figure it out, then. But I won't let you continue to sleep all day the way that you've been doing. Get dressed, and go into town. I'm sure someone can help you with something."

And then she was smiling at him, offering him a wink before she disappeared from his room, and Cloud found himself groaning as he flopped back down on his bed.

---

It was several hours later when he saw her again, walking along the thoroughfare in the center of Nibelheim's market district.

He'd spent most of the late morning and early afternoon there, stopping into every shop and boutique and place of business, inquiring for work. Most places instantly turned him down, stating they were already fully staffed. A few places took his phone number, but he didn't exactly feel confident about his prospects after each of those conversations.

He was rounding a corner, about to approach an ice cream parlor, when he saw Tifa Lockhart waking down the block alone, her messenger bag crossed over her body and her hair glimmering under the sunlight. Cloud knew that the high school was only a few blocks away from here, and it was just after three in the afternoon, when classes would have been letting out. As soon as he spotted her across the street, he felt his heart begin to pound and inch its way up toward his sternum.

Holy Alexander, she was so beautiful. He hadn't seen her in over a week, since the night he'd climbed the tree between their houses and forced his way into her bedroom so that he could hear her play the piano. It was the same night that he'd gently demanded she go on a date with him.

Well, maybe not so gently, he thought, inwardly grinning to himself as he watched her hips sway with her walk. He had really tested the limits, lingering in her bedroom while her father hovered only feet away in the hallway.

Cloud had to admit that he was a bit of a sucker when it came to girls. The pretty ones always captured his attention, and he couldn't help admire and wonder about them. He was a guy; he imagined this was perfectly normal. But he learned back in Midgar that the physical attraction that he sometimes felt looking at girls with full hips and dark hair wasn't enough. He'd managed to score dates with a few of his type, but they never really meant shit to him in the end.

But Tifa- Tifa was different. He knew it before he'd ever met her, just listening to the way that his mother gushed about her. And he knew it when he spotted her from afar a few days after they'd moved in, watching her from his kitchen window. But when he finally got the chance to meet her, he realized that Tifa had everything that he wanted and then some.

She was pretty. She was dark-haired and curvy. She was sweet and shy and coy and had the fullest lips he'd ever seen. She knew how to laugh and she knew how to toss back a joke or a tease.

She was smart. Witty, even. And she was talented. She could play the piano.

That first afternoon in the rain, he couldn't wait to tear his hoodie off and give it to her. Watching her fold it around the curves of her body had lit his entire soul on fire, sent him to the moon, and made it difficult to walk as his erection pressed and rubbed against the fabric of his boxers inside his pants. But Tifa hadn't seemed to notice, and she also didn't seem to notice the way that his face melted right off when he held her hands in his, feeling the softness of her skin and the fineness of her bones, imagining those long fingers as they drifted over the keys of a piano.

Fiery Ifrit, she was beautiful.

But nothing thus far topped the night that he'd climbed into her room. She had looked terrified - her eyes shooting back and forth between him and her bedroom door - and Cloud couldn't remember a more thrilling feeling. It made him feel things that he realized he'd never felt before, made him bold and more determined than ever to be with her.

And to hear her play the piano. In the days ever since, Cloud could not stop thinking about the mournful, lilting notes that Tifa had played for him as he laid out across her soft bed, wondering what it might feel like to make love to her beneath those pink, frilly sheets.

Cloud hadn't even made it to first base with the few girls he had taken out back in Midgar. What made him think he would ever get that far with a girl like Tifa Lockhart?

He did, however, manage to get her to promise to go out with him, and as he watched her make her way down the street, he found himself crossing it without even paying attention to oncoming traffic.

"Tifa!"

She stopped, turning toward him. He saw her lips turn up in a ghost of a smile as he approached, and it sent his heart into a desperate, aching rise.

"Oh! Hey, Cloud," she greeted, and he had to inhale his breath when he caught up to her.

"You just getting out of school?" he asked her, shoving his hands into his pockets and doing his best to remain cool.

"Yeah. I didn't have any extracurriculars today," she told him.

Cloud smirked, looking down at her as they continued down the street together, walking side by side. He hadn't seen her since that day in her bedroom, and Cloud realized that Tifa was really busy. When he had been in high school, he didn't do shit but go to class (on the occasions he wasn't cutting) and leave. He had no time for extracurriculars or extra anything when it came to school.

"What are you doing tonight?" he found himself blurting, unable to stop himself, and he rounded his way in front of her, forcing her to stop walking on the sidewalk.

"What?" she blinked, her red eyes bright as she looked up at him, skidding to a halt.

"It's Friday," he informed her. "You got plans? I was thinking about our date."

"Date?" Tifa repeated, and Cloud's entire body was set on fire when he realized that her cheeks were matching the color of her eyes.

Despite what she said, he knew that she hadn't forgotten.

"Yeah, come on," he coaxed, leaning in a little closer to her. He could faintly detect the scent of her soap or her perfume or lotion or whatever it was that was buried into her skin, a sweet vanilla flavor that was sugary and had him wanting to drop his mouth to her flesh. "You promised."

"I - "

"Tifa," he pleaded, taking a step closer.

Cloud was never so bold with a girl he liked. He hadn't shied away from asking a few on dates in the past, but he would never be so audacious to pursue them like this.

But then, he'd never liked a girl before the way that he liked Tifa Lockhart.

"Oh, but Cloud, I have a boyfriend, and -"

"So?" Cloud couldn't stop himself. He had seen the boy she was dating, a typical preppy, probably born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a mother who still wiped his ass. Cloud knew he could clean the floors of the entire high school with a kid like that. He didn't give a shit if Tifa was dating him.

He knew it wouldn't last; those high school romances never did. It was why he'd given up trying back in Midgar.

"Cloud - "

Impulsively, he reached for her hands - those fine, silky smooth digits that had flowed so gracefully over the keyboard of her piano, and he brushed his thumbs over her knuckles, hearing her notes replay in the back of his mind.

"Just give me a chance, Tifa," he insisted. "Just one date, remember? It doesn't have to be anything serious. You can show me your favorite parts of Nibelheim. I still don't really know my way around this place. I just want to spend a little time with you."

He watched her eyes widen, and his heart was now in the center of his throat, choking him and cutting off any further words as he waited for her to respond, his face hot.

"Oh… okay," she finally answered, and her eyes dropped to where he still held her hands, her cheeks now rosy and flushed with blood.

Cloud couldn't stop the hysterical grin that plastered itself to his face.

"Great. Let's meet outside our houses at seven?"

---

[ μ ] - εγλ - 1996 | 27th September

Secret Dates

Jody had been really, really upset when she'd canceled their date.

Tifa sat on the edge of her bed, feeling a little overwhelmed by the circumstances. On the one hand, she was actually glad to be off the hook for her date with Jody tonight. He had gotten into the habit of insisting they go out every Friday night, and it became a ritual that bored her, especially as she considered all of the ways that she could better use her time if she just stayed home. Not to mention that tonight, he had been planning to take her with him to a party at one of his friend's houses, another kid who was on the varsity basketball team with him. Parties were always the kinds of environments where Jody would quickly splinter away from her to be with his friends, and Tifa would find herself ambling through phony conversations with some of the girls she had classes with who were friendly but generally not very trustworthy. And it would go on that way until the end of the night when Jody would find her again, and they would go home without having spent any time at all together.

She wondered why they continued to bother calling these events dates.

But tonight, she was skipping her time with Jody to be with Cloud, and it sent something crazy and thrilling through her entire body as she realized that she was going out with another boy. A different boy, one who was just a little bit older than she was but was out of high school and was cute cute cute and wore leather jackets and listened to heavy metal and had a slight, bad boy, devil-may-care air about him. He was unconventional, a little shy at times, but still flirtatious in a way that made her entire body come alive with heat.

And she was skipping out on her date with her boyfriend to spend time with him.

It made her heart beat faster just thinking about how risky this was in a town as small as Nibelheim, wondering how Jody would react if he found out, how the gossip mills would churn, and why she was suddenly behaving as if she didn't care at all.

At present, Tifa was fresh out of the shower, staring at her options for her outfits for the evening, her bed covered in an assortment of clothing she'd plucked from her closet. Blouses, dresses, pants and sweaters and skirts, the variety covered her bed in a pile, and she wondered why it had become such a trial for her to just decide and figure out what she wanted to wear.

She realized, a smirk pulling dangerously at her lips, that she never went through quite this much thought and consideration when she got ready for her dates with Jody.

Although it was only September, the weather had already grown thick with the chills that were carried in with the gales from Mount Nibel's highest peaks. She decided on a pair of stretchy jeans and a long, black sweater, the hem just beyond her hips with a careful but tantalizing V-neck. She dressed, then brushed her hair and carefully put on just a little bit of makeup around her eyes, and applied some gloss to her lips before she smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

Her heart was beating in a new way, a rise and excitement inside of her that she hadn't felt before and left her almost breathless.

It was almost seven, and both of her parents were sitting in the living room when she descended the staircase. Holding her purse in front of her, Tifa took a step forward until they both noticed her, her mother speaking first.

"Tifa, are you going out?" Lorelai asked, and Tifa realized that her eyes were glassy and her voice was slurred and dull. She was leaning back against the couch, wearing a nightgown with a cardigan wrapped around her body to pull in the warmth. Her long, dark hair was swept around her shoulders in thick rivers, but it was frizzy around her crown. She blinked, and Tifa realized that she was holding a glass of wine in one hand as she leaned back.

"Yes," Tifa responded, not wanting to elaborate.

"And where are you going?" Her father demanded. "That Hartley boy taking you out again?"

Tifa hesitated, her eyes meeting his. She desperately did not want to answer him and tell the truth. She noticed then that he too was drinking, a tumbler of a dark bourbon on the coffee table in front of them.

She shifted on her booted heels, uncomfortable at what she was seeing but somehow glad that her parents were both at least lucid and not screaming at each other, that her mother wasn't crying in a rage. Still, she found herself trapped by her father's question, and her eyes darted down to her feet as she deliberated internally, before they drifted back up to meet his gaze.

"Yes," she lied, instantly hating herself for it.

This was enough to placate him, because Brian nodded and turned away, reaching for his glass. Her mother offered her a warm smile, one that Tifa had seen so many times over the years but had begun to slip away in the last stretch of months.

"Have fun, sweetie," Lorelai said. "Not too late, okay?"

Exhaling, Tifa nodded, sharing a smile of her own, dismayed by how it was sheltered in her falsehoods before she turned and made her way outside.

That thought passed through her with a shiver when she stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her house, the cool evening gusts wrapping around her. Her mother's rollercoasters of emotions were impossible to follow, and it seemed that alcohol had become a remedy for both of her parents to allay what ailed them internally. She only wondered if her mother was taking any medication, and how it might interact with whatever she booze she was now swallowing as she sat alongside her father in the living room, unspoken ghosts and ghouls living between them and their relationship as their lives began to further unravel.

Tifa pushed it from her mind, wrapping her arms around her upper body, glad that she'd worn the sweater but wondering if she would've benefited from a jacket, too. She shook her head, turning toward Cloud's house, and chewing on the inside of her bottom lip, made her way down the street in its direction.

She spotted him almost immediately - he was standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, right at the edge of his property, leaning back against the fence that bordered his front lawn. It was only beginning to grow dark out - the sky was a pretty, multicolored shade of twilight, all purples and indigoes and deep, entrancing blues. They were spotlighted by the celestial bodies that hung bright and white in the sky, and the combination sent glimmers across his irises, shining at her even as she approached from a dozen feet away.

He was dressed in jeans and a simple black shirt under that leather jacket, and something about the minimalist nature of all of it twisted up her insides and lit a flame between her thighs. She paused on the sidewalk when she was only a few feet away from him, staring at him and drinking him in, realizing that just looking at him set her body on fire, that her legs began to tremble and her head swam with dizziness as if she might pass out.

She felt hot and light and electrified, her eyes scanning the lean but firmly packed definition of his body that filled out his clothing, and she realized with a bizarre, stunning clarity that no boy, not Jody and not anyone else, had ever left her feeling this way, especially not from just a glance alone.

He tossed his head and shifted away from the gate when he saw her, and the movement forced his flaxen hair to tumble softly in its frame around his face.

"Hey, Tifa," he greeted her.

His voice was too low and too rumbly, and it sent more sparks to parts of Tifa's body that she still felt too embarrassed to acknowledge or indulge. She squeezed her fist around the straps of her purse, holding it in front of her as she stepped closer to him and offered him a tentative smile.

"Hi, Cloud," she finally responded, her voice thicker and deeper than she was used to hearing it, and even she had to wonder what was happening.

His eyes were scanning her up and down, and she realized that he was drinking in her entire presence, his line of sight pausing and hovering over her hips and then her breasts, before they rose up to her face, and his cheeks were deeply pink by the time their eyes met again.

"You look great," he told her, and her own face began to flare. "Like, really, really great."

Tifa was so outdone by the sincerity and the electricity she could detect behind his compliment that she had to look down as she felt her face flood, and she wondered how she would ever make it through this night.

"Thanks," she finally replied.

Cloud took a step closer to her then, bringing with him a clean, boyish scent, one that was colored by one of those spiced body sprays that Tifa often saw commercials for and wondered if boys really used them to attract girls. It seemed like they did, and to her surprise, it appeared that they achieved the desired effect.

Her lips parted when Cloud stood right at her side, and she watched him hesitate as if he wanted to say or do something more. Instead, he paused and nodded his head at her.

"Okay," was all he said.

Tifa furrowed her brow, confused. "What?" she finally asked. "Where are we going?"

But Cloud only shook his head, and his hands resumed their casual hold in his pockets. "Nah, Teef. You were supposed to show me around, remember? I don't know anything about Nibelheim."

Teef. Tifa felt her heart stutter at the sudden nickname, and she breathed in carefully, licking her lips before she looked back up at him.

"Okay, but I don't really know where to go," she admitted truthfully. There was no way she could take him to the town center and risk anyone from school seeing them together. The last thing she wanted was for the time she was spending with him to churn in the rumor mills or to get back to Jody or anyone else for that matter.

"Anywhere you like, Tifa," Cloud responded, cocking his head to one side, his blue eyes dazzling and deluging her body with new pulses of warmth. Where had he gotten eyes that shade? Every boy she'd seen with blue eyes had the same pale, watery azure shade that Jody had. "I just want to spend time with you. You could take me to the town dumpster and I'd be happy."

At that, Tifa found herself laughing, pressing her hand to her belly. Cloud's smirk cracked into a grin as he watched the joy unfold over her face, and Tifa found that despite the heat in her cheeks and the butterflies in her tummy, something about being close to Cloud Strife made her feel at ease.

After a moment, she nodded at him, an idea finally coming to mind. It was somewhere quiet and secluded, a place where she doubted anyone would find them and where she had often gone to clear her own mind.

"Come on," she finally said, and impulsively, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him along.

Cloud was warm next to her as they walked side by side through the center of town, and though he remained silent, Tifa realized that occasionally, he would glance down at her through his peripheral. She noticed it when she glanced up to catch a glimpse of his handsome, perfectly sculpted profile, and their eyes met, Cloud instantly blushing and Tifa's face heating up along with other parts of her body that she wished she knew how to deal with properly.

They bypassed the main boulevard in the center of town, Tifa finding a side street to cut down, when Cloud broke the quiet between them. "So, where are you taking me?" he asked.

Tifa smiled, staring down at her shoes, feeling her cheeks brightening again. "The water tower," she answered in a whisper.

The water tower was a special place, at least to her. It was right in the center of the village's largest park, and it had once been a popular date spot. When her parents were young and in the decades before that, boys brought their girlfriends there to propose to them. Plenty of prom nights culminated in the backseats of cars on the stretch of grass in front of the old wooden structure. And more than one legendary first kiss had taken place on the ledge of that tower.

For whatever reason, Tifa's generation didn't seem to hold much regard for the mythology of the old water tower in the center of the park. They snubbed it and found better ways to entertain their romantic ideals, ways that Tifa thought weren't very romantic at all. And the water tower was old and out of commission, nothing more than a symbol of days gone by in the past. The town's water supply was now managed by a much more modern reservoir system that had been installed by Shinra, and most people treated the water tower as an ancient relic.

At least she wouldn't have to worry about the kids from her high school catching her there with Cloud.

"Water tower?" Cloud repeated, his voice lifting with intrigue.

"Yep," Tifa answered with a smile in her voice. "It used to manage Nibelheim's water supply, but years ago we converted to the new system. And it also used to be a date spot. It has a really pretty view of the sky, so sometimes I visit it to stargaze."

"Date spot, huh?" Cloud teased gently, and Tifa felt her face light up, realizing what she had said without having even thought about it.

Cloud grinned silently to himself, but Tifa kept her eyes away from his, instead leading him through the cobblestoned streets until they reached Nibelheim's central park. The winds continued to blow, and Tifa could look up at the mountains and see their gray, treacherous peaks, could faintly detect the screech of dragons far off in the distance among those snow-capped hills.

"Here it is," Tifa gestured after they walked through the park's winding paths and the maze of its tall sequoias and aspens. "The water tower."

The structure loomed tall and antediluvian over the park, all wood and iron, a windmill at its apex frozen in place where the tower had been put out of commission so many years ago. Tifa turned to him, nodding toward a ladder at one side.

"I come here sometimes when I'm having a bad day, or when I just need to clear my head," she admitted. "Nobody comes out to this water tower anymore. I guess nobody appreciates things that are old or broken."

Cloud gave her a little smirk, nodding his head in agreement.

Tifa turned away and began to climb her way up the ladder, coming to the ledge that bordered the tower. It was at least fifty feet off of the ground and a dangerous fall, another reason why people had long ago stopped climbing up here to declare their love. But she was careful, as she always was, and she scooted to one side of the ledge and waited for Cloud to join her, her heart loud and pounding in her chest.

When he finally did, he sat much closer to her than she anticipated, bringing with him that crisp boyish scent that was stealing its way into manhood, and for reasons she felt unable to control, she found herself leaning in closer to him as she looked up at the sky.

"Oh, look, Cloud. Aren't the stars pretty tonight?"

Cloud leaned back, and Tifa didn't miss the way that he positioned one hand slightly behind her body. He nodded slowly.

"Yeah, Teef. It's gorgeous."

But he was looking down at her, his lips spreading into another genuine smile, and she saw his mouth move as if he wanted to say something else, but whatever it was, he held it back and blushed, turning away from her again.

"It's been a while since I've been out here," Tifa heard herself saying after silence had developed between them. "It used to be one of my favorite places, but now that we're here, I realize I haven't been up here in months."

"And why's that?" Cloud asked her softly.

Tifa shrugged, her fingers pulling at the hem of her sweater. "I don't know. I guess I've just been really busy lately."

"Busy?" Cloud repeated.

"Yeah," Tifa admitted, looking down at her hands now. "Getting ready for college, piano and band practice, student council, classes at Zangan's dojo, tutoring, taking care of my mom, and cooking…"

She trailed off, finding herself becoming overwhelmed just by hearing the verbalization of her responsibilities. Cloud had shifted where he sat next to her, turning so that he could face her.

"Taking care of your mom?"

Tifa sighed, looking back up at the streaks of glittery periwinkle and white that formed thick bands of stardust across the black canvas of the sky. "Yeah. She's sick."

Cloud didn't pry, but she did feel him lean in closer to her, and it made the heat that had settled in her belly fan out and spread, first up to her chest and neck, enveloping her heart, then down across and between her thighs, forcing her to squeeze them together.

"Sorry," he mumbled awkwardly, rubbing his hand behind his neck. "But it does sound like you're busy. That's a lot of extra school stuff."

Tifa shrugged, swinging her legs back and forth in front of her over the ledge as she stared down at her boots. "I have to keep up with everything, especially if I want to get into the Academy in the fall."

"The Academy?"

"The Midgar Academy of Arts," Tifa explained.

Cloud nodded, quiet again, and he pulled up one knee, holding it in front of him as he leaned further back, casually. Tifa swore that her heart was ricocheting so loudly in her chest that he could hear it, that the folks across town could hear it.

"That's a really fancy school," he finally observed after a moment. "But I can see you going there. You're really talented. I loved listening to you play the other night. I still can't get that melody out of my head."

As if to illustrate, he began to hum the tune that she'd played for him that night he'd snuck into her room - Dusk's Reverie - and Tifa felt her heart swell at his praise, her face hot all over again.

"T-hanks."

"Is that what you're really passionate about?" he asked her. "The piano?"

She looked at him finally, and he was sitting up again. With the change in both their postures, their eyes met, and Tifa found herself once again drowning in seas of blue that were dark and highlighted by starlight.

"Yes," she finally breathed. "I hope to one day become a concert pianist. I'd like to travel, like one of those bards in the old medieval stories."

Cloud cracked another smile. "I can see it," he told her, and the sincerity in his tone circled itself throughout her insides. "I bet you'd look so pretty on a stage."

Tifa blushed so severely that she had to turn away, finding herself biting her bottom lip, and she heard Cloud emit a nervous laugh at her side.

"Sorry," his voice cracked as he spoke, and Tifa turned back to find that his cheeks were bright and pink, too. "I - I just get carried away sometimes. You are really pretty, Tifa."

She wanted to cover her face with her hands, the bashful burn was so bad, but instead just kept her eyes averted, unable to stop the smile from bursting out across her face or the way that her entire body was urging her to turn and drift closer to him.

"Thanks," she finally responded, and she dared to look up at him again, catching the lazy smirk on his face.

She turned away before she could lose herself in his eyes again, and another comfortable silence began to grow. Cloud was leaning back again, his arms draped over his raised knee.

"What about you?" she asked, cutting through the quiet that was instilled in the night air. "What are you passionate about?"

Cloud offered her a toss of his shoulders. "I don't know, Tifa. Never really thought about it, I guess. I don't have any cool things that I'm good at like you are. I guess I'll be lucky if I find a job here in town."

Tifa frowned at this dark pessimism. "I don't think that's true, Cloud," she challenged. "Everyone is good at something. Maybe you just haven't found out what it is yet."

He shrugged again, now looking up at the sky and not in her eyes. "Maybe. I really don't know, Tifa. I haven't thought about it much. My mom is always up my ass about this stuff."

"Sorry," Tifa found herself apologizing, and right away, Cloud was leaning toward her, taking her wrist in his hand.

"Hey, no. Don't apologize, I didn't mean it like that. I - "

Tifa looked up at him then, the sensation of his palm around her wrist scalding her, and their eyes met, his widening as she stared back at him. She watched as his face began to tinge a rosy hue.

"I didn't mean - I just. I'm glad you asked. I like talking to you," he finally blurted.

"I like talking to you, too," Tifa was unable to stop the way that her words flowed out of her mouth like the cascade of a waterfall.

Cloud began to smirk again, but the red heat in his cheeks only deepened at her response. He started to lean in closer to her, and Tifa found herself staring at his lips, watching them part slightly and seeing the wetness around their inner rim, and she realized with utter fascination that maybe, just maybe, he was about to kiss her.

She was almost closing her eyes, preparing to fall into it when he caught himself and backed up a little, clearing his throat.

"I'm glad you brought me up here, Teef," he told her, and Tifa found it difficult to hide her disappointment, sitting up straighter and sealing her lips as she raised her gaze to look back up at him. "I know you said nobody comes out here anymore, but maybe we can?"

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

He shrugged, still blushing, even though he plowed on with his suggestion. "I mean, maybe this can be our spot."

Tifa was overheating, especially at how deep and dark his voice was colored. "O-oh. Sure."

"I just mean," Cloud went on, lowering his knee and dropping his hands to the tops of his thighs. "I just want to see you again, and spend more time with you."

Tifa closed her eyes, trying to push the flames back, trying to demand her body stop feeling so responsive. She turned to him.

"Oh, Cloud," she tried to find the right words to say as a torrent of thoughts spun through her mind. How badly she wanted to keep spending time with him. But there was Jody, and of course, her father, who she somehow thought would never approve of a boy like Cloud.

Wouldn't it be wrong to lead him on into something that she already knew was forbidden?

"I don't know," she went on. "You know I have a -"

"Boyfriend?" Cloud repeated with a laugh. "That prep douchebag you were with at the diner? You know I don't care about that kid, Tifa. Those high school relationships never last."

"Wait, Cloud, I think-"

But he was leaning into her, suddenly so close she could feel the heat radiate off of his body, and she almost jumped out of her skin when his arm snaked around her body and she felt his palm wrap around her waist.

"It can be our little secret, he whispered next to her ear as he drew in closer, his breath hot across her flesh. "Just like this water tower."

And then, just like that, before she could respond, he was kissing her, sending her entire body among the stars with an engulfment of sizzling and sparkling heat, her breasts suddenly feeling achy and heavy, the space between her thighs electrified and pulsing in a way that was new and unreal to her. His lips were a gentle press, the kiss wet and hot but chaste, lips never separating but mouths greeting and holding one another firmly with a still, calm rage of passion in the undercurrent as his skin burned into hers.

He stayed there with his mouth against hers for long moments that had her heart all the way up to her ears, before finally, he pulled away. Tifa heard the tempo of her pulse, a loud, resonate thrum across all of her senses. She watched in fascination as he licked his lips before he smiled at her, his cheeks still bright, and Tifa could no longer feel the coolness of the wind, her body was so conflagerated by fire.

There was nothing to be said, and Tifa nodded her acquiesce, returning his smile.

When Tifa got back to her bedroom that night, she buried herself under the covers and screamed into her pillow, squeezing her thighs together as tight as they would go to try and dull the sting.

Her first kiss with Cloud Strife, the first among many.

It was the start of a long, escalating climb to an exhilarating high that would precede a terrible, calamitous fall.