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.

4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

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A/N: Thank you to everyone for your kind reviews! They mean the world to me!

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 |21st March

Daydreams and Nightmares

"Are you cold?"

She turned, her dark, ruby red eyes glittering under the white shine of the lights of the moon and stars, capturing his soul and locking it in their depths. She nodded at him slowly, and instantly, he was compelled to move towards her.

She was leaning against the trunk of his mother's car, her hands buried in her pockets as she stared at him. Even though it was late August, it was chilly and windy outside, the late evening gales bringing in the perpetual frost from the mountains beyond. Her cheeks were bright and rosy, matching the color of her almond-shaped eyes.

He reached up to rub the back of his neck as he stared at her, her eyes widening when he suddenly moved in closer to her. He heard her breath catch quietly when he approached, and he couldn't stop himself from wrapping his arms around her, pulling her in tight for an embrace. She instantly melded into him, pressing her face into the soft leather of his jacket, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him back tightly. Her body, layered beneath her tee-shirt and the hoodie he'd given her almost a year ago, was warm and soft, and he could feel her heat radiate toward him in gentle waves as he pulled her into him. Her silky dark hair was chilled, cool against his cheek when he nuzzled her, and he couldn't stop himself from giving her a little squeeze at the sensation.

"We can go sit back in the car if you're cold," he whispered into her strands, rubbing her back gently, pressing her deeper into his hold.

"But we can't see the stars from inside of the car," she whined in response, and, finding her adorable, leaned in to nuzzle his face in her hair.

"I'll try to keep you warm, then," he whispered, turning her gently so that her back was to him, and he leaned against the car's trunk, holding her tight as he tipped his head back to look up at the sky.

"Cloud?"

"Hm?"

"Do you… do you think we'll always be together?"

Caught slightly off guard by the nature of her question, Cloud dipped his chin, lowering his face beside her cheek.

"Why do you ask that?"

"I just mean," she continued, "I'm going away to school in the fall, and… I don't want us to not be together when we are apart. I know that doesn't make sense, but…"

"I know what you mean, Teef."

Cloud squeezed her a little harder again, inhaling the faint scents of jasmine left in the remnants of her shampoo in her hair. "We'll figure it out," he told her, glancing back at the stars. "We'll talk to each other all of the time, we'll do those video chats and I'll come visit you whenever I can. I know Midgar pretty well."

"Promise me," she said suddenly, turning in his arms to face him.

"What?"

"Promise me, Cloud," she said again. "That even when we are far apart, we'll still be together. Always."

Her eyes were wide and glassy, and she blinked as she stared up at him, her pupils widening with the prospect of hope that lay behind them. He could see the stars above reflected in those crimson depths, and he brought his palm up to cup her cheek gently, nodding his head.

"Okay," he whispered, his breath escaping into the night air in white puffs. "I promise, Tifa. We'll always be together."

"I promise too," Tifa responded.

And then he smiled, just as Tifa rose up on her toes, pressing her lips to his gently, and he wrapped his arms around her again, holding her tight as they kissed.

.

.

.

Cloud groaned as he opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling, sunlight streaming into his room and searing against his eyelids. He was torn from sleep by the sound of knocking at his door, and he turned, wincing at the sound.

"Cloud!" Denzel's tiny voice called from the other side. "The bus is going to be here any minute!"

Shit. Cloud rubbed his face, dispelling the dream from his mind as he kicked his feet over the side of the bed and rose, making his way across the room to open the door. He pulled it open to find Denzel standing in front of him with his jacket and backpack.

"Did you eat breakfast?" Cloud asked groggily, feeling like shit for oversleeping and missing out on fixing it for him.

"Cereal," Denzel answered.

Cloud nodded, running his hand down his face and feeling the line of stubble that had emerged on his chin. "You got everything? Your lunch?"

"Yep," Denzel affirmed.

Cloud nodded, ruffling the kid's hair a little bit. "Okay. Have a good day. I'll see you after school."

Denzel offered him a small smile, before he turned and wordlessly left the apartment.

Cloud sighed when he was gone and closed the door again, turning to face his bed. His eyes drifted to the bedside table, where his PHS sat beside a half-empty bottle of whiskey.

Shaking his head, Cloud made his way back to his bed, collapsing flat on his back on the mattress, the coils creaking as he stared up at the ceiling.

He heard the front door quietly close as Denzel left for the day, and Cloud rubbed his temples absently, closing his eyes to the cracks and peels in the paint that were beginning to form in one corner of the ceiling. As soon as his eyelids shut, another image of Tifa fell in front of him, this time not one of her as a fresh-faced teenager, but one of her from the other day, doe-eyed and inquisitive but with a deep, lingering sadness behind her gaze.

More than three weeks had passed since he'd made an ass of himself in front of her with his stupid questions following Denzel's second piano lesson. He couldn't have gotten out of that bar any faster once he'd realized the words that had spilled from his lips, the shocked look on her face in response instantly sending his heart reeling and his face on fire.

Dumbass.

In the weeks since, Cloud had gone out of his way to limit his interactions with Tifa Lockhart whenever he brought Denzel by on Sunday afternoons for his lessons. The wounds that they had already torn at were painful and raw, as if they had never really healed in the ten years that had passed between them. Every time he made contact with her, he felt them rip just a little bit more, especially when she was so pretty and her body had seemed to fill out even more than he'd remembered it, every part of her distracting him with its firmness and its softness. He'd taken to going out of his way to avoid making eye contact with her whenever he dropped off or picked up Denzel, and ever since he'd confronted her with those awkward, demanding questions, she'd seemed less inclined to try to get him to sit down and chat with her or to take another drink with her at her bar. She would give him a brief update on Denzel's lesson, and had even started writing notes in a notebook that went home with him that Cloud could read later.

Other than that, their conversations never lasted longer than a minute or two.

Cloud was still cursing himself for his impulsive behavior that afternoon in the booth in her bar, when they had hesitantly looked across the table at one another while they shared whiskey from their home village.

At the present moment, he closed his eyes to the ceiling above, finding himself wincing as an image of Tifa hovered in front of him once more, but this time, she was young again, standing in front of him as he held her in front of his mother's car under the stars.

He'd promised her that night. Promised that they would always be together. And yet, it had only been a few weeks later that that promise had been broken.

He'd broken it; she'd broken it, and there'd been nothing that either of them could to stop it from happening.

He tried to shake her from his mind again, and when the image that was stamped into his memory refused to dispel, he groaned in frustration, rolling to his side and reaching for the handle of whiskey on his bedside table. Leaning up on his elbow, he unscrewed the cap and took a long swig from the bottle, swallowing the stale, bitter liquid down, feeling its sharp burn traverse his throat.

It instantly set loose a fog in his head, and he chased the feeling by quickly slugging down another before he set the bottle back to the side. As soon as he did, he looked down at his hands, clenching them carefully and staring at the callouses on the insides of his palms. He closed his eyes again, shaking his head.

The image of Tifa was still there.

He grunted in frustration, about to reach for the bottle again, when his PHS was ringing at his side, right next to the whiskey. He swore under his breath, reaching for it reluctantly. He could tell by the number on the display that the call was coming from the Shinra HQ.

"Hello?" he finally answered, after staring at it stupidly for four rings.

"Strife," Kunsel's voice came through, crisp and clear. "Are you planning to come into the office today?"

Cloud tried to stifle the deeply displeased groan that threatened to clap back in response. The truth was, he had passed out sometime after midnight after drinking half of that bottle of whiskey, and right now, his blood was itching for him to continue the cycle with a little day drinking. He'd had half a mind to stay home and polish the bottle off before catching a nap to sober up before Denzel got home.

"Why?" Cloud asked instead of answering.

"Lazard has a job for us," Kunsel answered. "And he wants us to leave for it as soon as possible. Clean up mission. Can you be here within the half-hour?"

Cloud sighed, running his hands through his hair, now sitting up fully. He glanced mournfully at the bottle of whiskey, knowing that monster missions usually paid well and that he could use the money.

"Fine," he responded.

Kunsel was rattling off a few details about the mission, but Cloud barely listened, feeling his impending hangover begin to threaten now that it was clear he was not going to continue drinking. He hung up the phone a moment later, running his hand down his face as he tried to grasp onto his sobriety that only moments ago he had been so eager to relinquish.

Sighing, he pushed up to his feet and made his way out of the bedroom and to the bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His chin had broken out into a film of faint, uneven stubble, and Cloud, who kept himself clean-shaven, realized that he hadn't shaved in nearly a week. He shook his head at his appearance, his skin paler than usual and his eyes underlined by dark circles. Scowling, he turned the faucet on and splashed cold water into his face, trying to bring himself back to reality.

He managed to brush his teeth, shower, and shave, stuffing some toast into his mouth to soak up the lingering remnants of alcohol in his stomach before he finally left his apartment for the day. It was already after nine, and the morning rush hour traffic had mostly died down, Cloud managing to arrive at the Shinra Tower after a twenty-minute ride. It was the first day of spring, and the weather had begun to warm slightly, the sun bearing down on Cloud and flaring the dull, pulsing headache that lived in the back of his skull. Doing his best to ignore it - he'd gone to work plenty of times hungover and fresh off of a bender - Cloud parked his bike in the Shinra garage, grabbing his sword from its compartments before he made his way to the opposite end to find the utility vehicle repository where he was to meet Kunsel.

He found his comrade in the garage near the exit ramp, leaning against a Shinra utility truck, inspecting the curved steel of a gunblade. Upon hearing Cloud's footsteps approach, Kunsel looked up, standing up straighter and sheathing the weapon at his hip.

"You look like shit," he greeted him.

Cloud scowled. "Thanks," he responded sarcastically. "What's this mission about?"

Kunsel pushed away from where he leaned against the vehicle, shrugging as he made his way around to the driver's side. Taking that as his cue to follow, Cloud pulled open the passenger door and climbed into the truck.

Once inside, Kunsel settled into his seat, pulling on his seatbelt before he picked up a red folder that was sitting on the dash. He handed it to Cloud.

"Monster infestation in Sector8," he explained, running his fingers over his goatee. "Take a look at page three. Looks like an advanced breed of drake that spawned from a breach in the reactor. Usually, those leaks only cause a scourge in the slums, 'cause shit always runs downhill. But for some reason, the monsters have been popping up Topside, wrecking all kinds of havoc right in the center of the theater district. The other day there was a nasty attack last week at a showing of Loveless. Naturally, since it's up here messing with Shinra's interests, they want it eradicated."

"Of course," Cloud sighed in agreement, thumbing through the briefing in the folder. The directives indicated that they were to go to the source of the infestation, to a nest deep in the belly of the reactor to dispatch the creatures so the maintenance crews at the reactor could seal the leaks and make repairs.

"Shouldn't be too difficult," Kunsel added, backing the truck out of the garage, picking up the streets towards Sector8. "And take a look at the bounty. The pay is good."

"The monsters are probably particularly nasty," Cloud muttered cynically, glancing at the pay rate at the bottom of the final page. He closed the folder and tossed it back on the dashboard, turning to glare out of the window, the side of his skull still throbbing with a dull, distant ache. "Let's just get this over with."

Kunsel didn't say much else after that. He turned the radio up instead, some backwater tune that Cloud realized Kunsel was soon tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel in rhythm to. Cloud remembered that Kunsel had been from a country village out West, not too unlike Nibelheim - Modeoheim, it might have been. Cloud himself couldn't stand this kind of music, and he tried not to let the irritation work its ways too deeply into his nerves. He was already in a bad enough mood.

Thankfully, it didn't take long for them to reach Sector8, Kunsel soon pulling the utility vehicle through a security checkpoint at the reactor's gates. They flashed their badges at the infantry grunts guarding the main entrance, waving their rifles as they indicated for them to pass.

Cloud had mostly tried to deaden his thoughts and his senses as Kunsel parked and they made their way inside of the reactor, passing through the long service tunnels toward the reactor's core. For the next couple of hours, he wanted to simply go through the motions and complete the task at hand, without thinking too deeply about the many nagging thoughts and distractions that had been plaguing him for the past few weeks.

Kunsel spoke strategy absently at his side as they crossed a catwalk that led into a darkened antechamber. Cloud was only half listening, distracted by the wayward thoughts of Tifa and Denzel and the past that had been pestering him since he woke that morning. He nodded and grunted in response as if in agreement, although the truth was that he had not really been paying attention.

They descended a ladder that brought them deep into the reactor's core, and the atmosphere had gone cold, this section of the infrastructure infused with cooling reagents to keep the mako fresh as it was pumped from the ground. The air was thick with the pungent odor of mako, the scent growing stronger the deeper that they descended inside.

"Just where is this nest?" Cloud asked after they made their way down yet another ladder, the smell now overpowering as they advanced towards the mako pools that lay at the bottom of the reactor's coil tanks.

Kunsel was opening his mouth to respond, but was stopped by a distant cry that seemed to come from beyond the far left wall. He stopped in his tracks, unsheathing his gunblade before he turned to Cloud.

"It's supposed to be in a mechanical operating room near the reactor's core," he finally responded. "Sounds like it might be right beyond that doorway."

Cloud nodded, unstrapping his Fusion Sword from his back and holding it out in front of him at the ready as they carefully rounded the corner, the metal grating of the floor squealing quietly beneath his boots. As they passed the bend of the wall, Cloud could see the doorway to the maintenance room at the end of the dark hallway, the stench of mako now enough to choke.

"There it is," Kunsel said low under his breath. "Remember, drakes are mostly aerial, so we'll be at an advantage if we can get a few sneak attacks in. We should move quietly, maybe use a few spells."

"I've fought drakes before," Cloud responded, unable to keep the nastiness out of his tone. "How many of them are there supposed to be?"

It was Kunsel's turn to sound frustrated. "Didn't you read the briefing?" he asked. "There's presumed to be about half a dozen. A small family."

Cloud just rolled his eyes and focused his attention on the door in front of them. In the dimness of the walkway, both his and Kunsel's eyes were pulsing with the faint glow of mako that coursed through their blood.

"Let's go," Cloud finally said, taking the lead.

They pressed on, weapons at the ready, in the direction of the maintenance room. They could hear the faint creaks of the entire reactor settling around them, the squeak of pipes and the groan of the cylindrical coils and pumps inside of the facility that kept the mako moving throughout the refinement process. Cloud let these sounds fade into the background as they focused on their target.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Cloud glanced at Kunsel, nodding his head in his direction before he carefully shouldered the door open. Inside was a large control room, lined with machinery that was responsible for the operation of components of the reactor's cooling and filtration systems. The entire back wall was covered in a sticky mist, evidence of the nest the drakes had developed there.

"Disgusting," Kunsel commented as soon as a new, putrid odor infiltrated their senses.

From where they stood, there were only two drakes present, and they both were hovering in the air. Cloud briefly wondered where the others might be - entertaining the idea that they may have left the reactor to wreak havoc somewhere Topside again - when both creatures turned, one of them emitting a screeching howl as it made its way in their direction.

"Round one," Kunsel muttered at his side as he raised his gunblade.

Cloud nodded, instantly assuming battle stance, raising his sword for a strike as the drake drew in near. When it was within Cloud's reach, he realized that both creatures were babies, or small children, as far as mutated monsters were concerned. He noted that the parents were not at the nest at present, and that thought disturbed him as he brought up the sharp edge of steel, leaping high into the air to reach the beast as he slashed across its abdomen, spilling its guts.

"These things are awful," Kunsel was complaining as he dispatched the second drake, but Cloud didn't have an opportunity to respond, cut off by a violent shriek from just beyond the hallway from whence they'd come.

"Shit," Cloud murmured, leaving the control room with Kunsel at his heels.

He stepped back onto the catwalk, finding the remaining four drakes hovering in the air beyond, all adults, flapping their wings wildly as they yelled through angry, dripping jaws. The one in the front of the pack was the largest and was a bright blue color, and Cloud instantly knew that it was the mother of this pack, and that she was pissed.

"Try to corner them on the opposite side," Kunsel advised. "I'll beat them back from here."

Cloud nodded, moving in with his sword in front of him. He tried to push through to get behind the drakes, but every time he moved forward, the female swooped in his direction, her claws threatening to rip right through his uniform and tear his flesh off of his body. Frustrated with the game of cat and mouse they were beginning to play, Cloud growled and ran full force into the melee, grunting as he began a violent, uncoordinated assault against the drake at the front of the pack, Kunsel rushing in to assist.

"Strife!" he heard Kunsel call from behind him, but Cloud disregarded him, instead pushing through yet again, flipping against the nearby railing to give himself leverage to reach high enough to hack at the drake's tender underbelly.

The mother drake's scales were thick and unrelenting, making it difficult for Cloud to mortally wound her. None of this was helped by the insistent wing-flapping and screaming of the lesser drakes behind her, their mucousy spittle flying in every direction as they roared. Still, Cloud ignored this, intending to chip away until he could bring down the beast.

"Cloud!"

Cloud had raised his sword in the air, but at Kunsel's frenzied shout of his name, he felt a sharp pain hit the side of his skull. He groaned, lowering his weapon as he crouched over, a hand coming up to his temple as vivid stripes of white, blinding light interrupted his vision.

.

.

.

"Zack - "

"Cloud!"

Cloud tried to pull at his seatbelt, feeling it constrict his body, pinning him against the seat as he struggled, the Zolom's roar causing the entire highway to shake as if an earthquake had slammed into it. Zack swore at his side, and Cloud winced when he heard his best friend shatter the glass of the already cracked windshield by slamming his boot into it.

Aerith was still screaming in the backseat, the sound shrill and piercing. Cloud could distinctly hear Denzel's soft, terrified cries interspersed through all of the horrible sounds that surrounded him. The rain continued to assault the earth from the heavens, and Cloud had just managed to get out of his seatbelt when the Zolom crossed the broken barrier and made its way onto the highway with a soul-shredding shriek.

Hearing the desperate and terrifying sounds build into a crescendo of horror around him, Cloud reached up to the roof to press a button and put in a distress call back to headquarters.

"I need my sword," Zack was saying, coughing and holding his ribs, trying to push himself through the broken windshield.

Their weapons were in the rear of the vehicle, but as Cloud managed to kick open his door and tumble from his upside-down position onto the wet, muddy road, littered with sharp fragments of broken glass, he realized that Aerith had finally stopped screaming. She was instead glowing with a bright blue aura, and the hue lit up the entire stretch of highway as she sent a Blizzaga spell in the direction of the Zolom, who hovered less than forty feet away from them.

The beast's entire body, towering nearly a hundred feet above, was suddenly encased in bright, frigid shards of ice that burst when the Cetra flicked her wrist. Using this moment of the Zolom's distraction, Cloud crawled to his knees and made his way to the back of the vehicle where the swords were stored.

"Aerith," he called to her through the thickness of the rain as he passed her side of the vehicle, pulling open her door to give her room to escape. "Take Denzel and run for cover under those trees! We'll finish it off."

He noticed that Aerith's forehead was bleeding profusely, and she looked dazed as she nodded, bracing herself on her hands and knees as she tried to crawl out of the overturned vehicle. Instantly, her dress became soaked, her hair sticking to her body as the rain fell in heavy sheets.

Cloud hesitated, realizing how she struggled to move, and he noticed that her dress was soaked with blood. She was holding her abdomen as she maneuvered across the asphalt, and Cloud almost went to her, until he heard the Zolom hiss and roar again, this time slamming its tail into the ground and sending another shockwave through the earth.

He moved past her, finally pushing up to his feet despite the screaming pain in his limbs from the way he had been jostled during the accident. He found his and Zack's swords strapped to the back of the Shinra vehicle where they'd left them; somehow, Zack was at his feet and making his way around the vehicle, still holding on to his side.

He could hear Zack wheezing even as the Zolom continued to scream. Cloud immediately grabbed the Buster Sword, pushing through the pain to jog around to the other side of the vehicle to hand it to him.

"Can you stand?" he asked, noticing how Zack was leaning against the side of the car, its tires still spinning like mad in the darkness.

Zack took his weapon and nodded, pushing away from the vehicle and leaning on the hilt of the sword. It appeared that he had hit his head during the crash, as a thin line of blood had been etched across his forehead and was dripping down the side of his face. "Just get Aerith and Denzel away from the road," he instructed, "I'll handle the Zolom."

Cloud started to protest, just as another bright light erupted in an array of halo-shaped bursts. Cloud's eyes widened as looked across the highway to find Aerith on her knees, her hands raised up to the sky as if in worship. Cloud strapped his sword to his back and looked over at Zack.

"What is she doing?"

"Casting something," he answered with a thick, violent cough, and Cloud caught a burst of blood that erupted from his lips before he began limping around the vehicle in the direction of Aerith and the Zolom. "Just get Denzel."

Cloud was about to say something in response, but Zack was already facing away from him, holding his sword up in preparation for a fight. Cloud turned and pulled the back door open, carefully ducking down to find Denzel twisted in the backseat, his hands over his head as he trembled and cried softly to himself. Feeling the rain still pelting his back, Cloud carefully reached out one hand to take the boy's.

"Come on, Denzel," he pleaded gently, trying to encourage him. "I need to get you out of the car. Are you hurt? Can you move?"

Denzel slowly lowered his hands, dropping them to his sides as he turned to look at Cloud, his face stained wet with tears. Cloud was now almost completely drenched through from the rain, and his hair was now sticking to the sides of his face.

Denzel tried awkwardly to turn in the overturned vehicle, while Cloud pushed in just enough to unfasten his seatbelt. When the boy shifted enough for him to get leverage over him, he hooked his hands under Denzel's arms and pulled him out of the car, setting him onto the ground beside him.

"I need you to run for that line of trees," Cloud was saying as he pointed in the distance, just as a bright burst of green light opened up into the sky. "Just stay there, you'll be safe. We'll come for you soon."

Denzel started to cry again, but Cloud gave him an encouraging push, and the boy turned and ran for the grass on the side of the road in the direction of the trees, stumbling slightly over his own feet in the grass. The burst of green energy slammed into the Zolom, causing it to reel back with a terrible wail, slamming its tail into the ground in fury.

Cloud narrowed his eyes, seeing the Ultima magic filter through the skyline where Aerith had unleashed it. Cloud unstrapped his sword again and held it out in front of him, making his way across the highway to join Zack, who was preparing to attack the Zolom, despite the unsteady way he wavered on his feet. Aerith had collapsed again from exertion, and the Zolom, now furious, was glowing as it began to ready an attack.

"We need to get out of here!" Cloud was shouting, but Zack was running forward with his sword in position for an attack with a sudden summoning of energy. Cloud watched in disbelief as he leaped for the Zolom, hacking away at a portion of its torso with the Buster Sword, interrupting the spell that it was casting and causing it to cry out in pain, its long, leathery tongue slipping out and stretching toward the sky as it threw its head back and hissed violently. Zack jumped back, and when he landed on his feet, whatever injuries he had sustained in the car seemed to catch up with him, because suddenly, he was on his knees.

Cloud realized that he had no healing materia equipped, and he glanced over at Aerith, wondering why she had not tried to heal herself or Zack. She was on her hands and knees on the side of the road, her hair now flattened to her body as she stared down at the asphalt, trembling. Cloud looked up at the Zolom again, readying his sword for an attack, when he realized that the creature's tail was moving at breakneck speed, whipping through the windy rain under the flash of lightning like a scythe. Cloud tried to process the images that were flashing in front of him, in disbelief when he realized that the Zolom's tail had wrapped itself around Aerith's body, squeezing her tight and turning her blue, until, horrifyingly, its pointed end plunged itself into her heart, the creature screaming again as it bared its fangs to the sky,

"Aerith!" Zack shouted, and he was again pushing himself to his feet, stumbling in her direction as the Zolom dropped her lifeless body to the asphalt, slithering even closer to them on the highway, sending a splash of rainwater in every direction as it moved closer across the muddied tar. Cloud shook the disbelief from his brain as he ran forward with his sword at the ready, prepared to attack.

The Zolom moved far too quickly, though, and it whipped its tail into Zack next, slamming his body with so much force that he dropped the Buster Sword with a clatter and slid across the highway, slamming back into the overturned Shinra sedan. Cloud's eyes widened as the Zolom shrieked, and when he turned back to glance at Zack, he realized that he was completely still where he lay beside the car's tires.

Narrowing his eyes, Cloud turned back to the Zolom, lifting his sword again, a new sense of rage filling his entire being. While the Zolom lowered itself again from its raised position, focused on charging another spell, Cloud used the opportunity to run forward and attack.

The next few moments transpired in a blurred fog as Cloud tore through the pain that sat in his muscles as he assaulted the Zolom, interrupting it before it flung a Beta spell in his direction. He managed to tear open the beast's torso, taking advantage of the wounds that Zack had already carved into the serpent's soft underbelly. Cloud flipped back out of the way as the Zolom's entrails dumped out into a bloodied green and purple spill on the highway, the wild rainwater sending the sinuous tissue and matter splattering in every direction.

While the Zolom screamed at the mortal wound, its piercing cries echoing a devastating pain into the atmosphere, Cloud went first to Aerith, gathering her broken, bloodied body into his arms and carrying her back to the side of the crashed vehicle, laying her carefully beside Zack, who had pushed himself up to his elbows slightly, his face now covered in blood as he began to hack and cough and spit.

As he laid her down beside him, the rain beginning to flood around them, Cloud realized that Aerith's eyes were blank, their green pools staring straight ahead at the bleak sky in a frozen state of horror. He felt a vice clench around his heart, the pressure tightening when Zack started to roll onto his side and pull her to him.

"Aerith," he tried to call her name, but his voice was cracked and fragmented, his throat flooded with blood that was bubbling up as his pierced lungs began to pool and fill. He wrapped one arm around her, lowering his face to her forehead and pressing a kiss to her wet skin before he began to sob, a broken, choked sound.

Cloud sat back, looking out over the swamps just beyond. The Zolom had collapsed and began to sink, its body now heavy from death, in a slow slither back toward the murky waters. There were no other sounds besides the beat of the rain on the concrete and the underside of the flipped car, Zack's sobs and wails puncturing all of it like the rapid-fire of bullets. Cloud turned back to his best friend, watching him brokenly mourn the death of his wife.

"Where is Denzel?" Zack suddenly asked, leaning one hand up to Cloud, reaching out to grab him.

'I sent him for cover," Cloud answered, just as he heard the distant wails of emergency vehicles beyond, the sound of a chopper approaching from above. "He'll be safe."

Zack began to sputter and cough again, and he reached for Cloud's fist, two gloved hands suddenly clasping together as he held him tight, falling back to the concrete and pulling Cloud with him.

"Promise me," Zack began, the blood now streaming from his lips, "That you'll take care of him for me. I don't have… we don't have anyone who can -"

He was interrupted as he began to cough violently, thick, dark red blood bubbling from his mouth like syrup.

"Zack?" Cloud squeezed his hand, realizing that his throat was tightening, tears blending with the rain that ran down his face. "You're gonna be okay, Zack… just - "

"Promise me," Zack interrupted with another cough. "…Protect …my living legacy."

Cloud's body was still screaming with pain, but the bruises and scrapes he'd survived during the accident and his battle with the Zolom were superficial compared to the sudden aches that were tearing through his heart as he watched his closest friend die in front of his eyes.

"I… I promise," Cloud responded, just as the emergency helicopter hovered above the highway in the distance, medics and troopers descending the ladder with shouts and making their way across the deluged concrete.

Cloud kept his hand clasped with Zack's, and Zack soon turned away to look at Aerith again, before he closed his eyes for the final time. As soon as the last breath left his lungs, Cloud began to cry and sob, unable to stop even when a group of medics fell to his side, surrounding them and gently pulling him away from their bodies.

Somehow, in the confusion and the haze as the emergency vehicles pulled up and began unloading supplies and stretchers, Cloud turned away from the scene and made his way into the fields where he had sent Denzel. It was still raining, but it had begun to lighten, and Cloud jogged through muddy grass, his skin cold and soaked through nearly to the bone as he headed for the trees, calling Denzel's name as he went.

He eventually found the boy huddled behind a trunk, his arms above his head in fear again as he tried to block everything out. He was shivering and crying, and Cloud stopped to stare at him, a thousand realizations slamming into him at once as he turned over in complete horror and disbelief at what had just happened.

His voice was trapped as he tried to speak, but Denzel heard him clear his throat, and he turned and looked up at him, his eyes red from tears.

"Where's mom?" was the first thing out of the boy's mouth. "Dad?"

Cloud broke down at that moment, falling to his knees as he gathered Denzel into his arms, the boy beginning to weep violently as if he knew what had happened, though Cloud had said nothing.

His living legacy.

Cloud had promised.

.

.

.

"Cloud!"

Kunsel's third shout of his name had finally snapped him out of the fog, the vision of that rainy night on the highway finally dispelling. Unfortunately, it had come a moment too late, and Cloud felt the full force of the drake's hindquarters slam into him, one claw making contact with his torso and tearing his jacket, just barely grazing his skin.

Cloud tumbled and slid back across the catwalk, groaning with pain as he slammed into the railing. He heard bullets fired in the distance, watching as Kunsel flipped and took down the female drake with a carefully aimed strike to the throat. Gathering his wits, Cloud kipped back up to his feet and turned to leverage a materia attack to the remaining drakes, singeing them alive with a Fira spell.

It wasn't long after that that the two men had dispatched the beasts and were both left panting on the reactor's catwalk, watching as the bodies disintegrated into the Lifestream. Kunsel heaved a sign and leaned over his knees, while Cloud gripped his forehead, trying to dispel the sharp pain and the distant images of the past that had flashed in front of him at the least opportune moment.

"Are you alright?" Kunsel was suddenly asking. "Man, you blacked out for like a minute and a half. I was calling you over and over again. That drake would have torn you in half if I hadn't gotten you to snap out of it."

Cloud shook his head out before he flung the blood from his sword and strapped it to his back again. Feeling completely frustrated with himself, he turned away from the concern in Kunsel's pale gray eyes, leaning over the railing as the back of his mind continued to burn.

"…I'm fine," he responded after a moment, refusing to face his comrade.

Kunsel cleared his throat awkwardly, then sheathed his gunblade before coming around to Cloud's side. He was just a few inches taller than Cloud, but similar in build, lanky yet well defined. He dropped a gloved hand carefully to Cloud's forearm.

"Listen," he began in a soft, low voice, "Usually… usually we're supposed to report these kinds of incidents that happen in the field. Irregularities, or whatever you want to call them."

Instantly, Cloud turned to Kunsel, his features twisting up into a sharp scowl.

Kunsel raised his hands. "I won't include it in the report," he said immediately. "And I won't say anything to Lazard. I just… I worry about you, man. You've been out of it for months."

Cloud looked away again, feeling his eyes burn, his muscles tensing and his nerves flaring with pain. The images of Zack and Aerith's death were still bright signals against his retinas, seared there forever, and with Kunsel hovering at his side, he suddenly felt trapped, ready to flee this entire situation and drown his skull in a puddle of booze.

"Are we done here?" he asked in response.

Kunsel watched him for a moment, then nodded his head solemnly, letting his hand slide away from Cloud's arm. Cloud peered at him through his peripheral, seeing the disappointment and the worry ripple over Kunsel's features as he quietly turned away, his boots the only sound, heavy against the metal below their feet.

Cloud felt a new, sharp pang of guilt eat away at a small part of his insides at that look on Kunsel's face, but he shoved it away, keeping his eyes downcast as he stared down at the river of mako below.

"Yeah," Kunsel finally agreed, his voice tinged with an obscure sadness. "Let's go.

---

Cloud was silent for the remainder of the day as they drove back to headquarters. He stared out of the window of the jeep, watching the sights of Midgar pass them by, its tall office buildings and well built, one-family homes that lined the quiet residential streets. But the entire time that he watched, he saw nothing in front of him except for a rainy stretch of highway and endless ponds of blood that were melding into the rainwater.

The afternoon transpired without incident. Kunsel left him alone at his desk on the contractor's wing for the rest of the afternoon, and Cloud had tried to complete his own report on their mission without descending into the constant pull of distractions that were born from the misery of his own thoughts. Around two, Marle Collins texted his PHS, reminding him that report cards were being distributed that afternoon and that he needed to come by to pick Denzel's up after school.

Cloud had sighed at this. He had completely forgotten about it, and now he was frustrated that he had to deal with Denzel's school bullshit after the shitty day he'd already had. As soon as he'd gotten the text, he slammed his laptop shut, intending to finish his final report tomorrow, and left the Shinra building without another word to anyone.

When he arrived at the school around four that afternoon, he learned that Denzel was in the gym along with some of the other students who were waiting for their parents to pick them up on report card night. Cloud tried to hold on to the remainder of his patience as the front desk asked him to sign in and then update his emergency contact information before he was directed to Marle's classroom on the second floor.

When he arrived, he found the older woman wrapping up a conversation with a young couple who were sitting in pupil desks across from where Marle stood against her teacher's desk. The man was blonde and the woman was dark-haired; they were a handsome couple and they leaned close to each other, hand in hand as Marle spoke animatedly about their child. Cloud hovered by the door and stared at them from the shadows, and suddenly Tifa was on his mind again, and he tore away from the couple as he swore and looked down at his boots.

More and more it was becoming difficult for him to concentrate without getting hung up on the past or dwelling on Tifa's reemergence in his life. And he could deal with neither situation, both leaving him feeling on edge and anxious and unsure if he could trust himself to make a decision that wouldn't result in total catastrophe, the way it nearly had just a few hours ago.

He was staring at the lockers across the hall with his arms crossed over his chest when the couple emerged, both smiling as they left the classroom and made their way down the hall. Cloud watched them from his peripheral until Marle stepped into the hallway, facing him with a pleasant smile on her face.

"Mr. Strife," she began, extending her hand the way that she always did. "I'm glad that you could make it."

Cloud resisted the urge to roll his eyes, accepting her hand. "Cloud is fine."

She nodded, but Cloud already knew she would probably continue to refer to him in the same formal manner that she usually did. "Please, come in. The kids are playing basketball in the gym. This won't take long."

Cloud followed her, and they both sat at pupil desks, facing one another. Marle had her grade book in front of her, and she carefully opened it, sliding a slip of paper out and handing it to Cloud.

"That is Denzel's report card," she informed him. Cloud unfolded the paper and quickly scanned the grades; there were mostly C's and a couple of B's. He looked back up at Marle, waiting expectantly for her to explain.

"At the beginning of the cycle," she began," I was concerned that Denzel may fail most of his classes, as you may remember from our previous conversations. But in the last several weeks, I have seen a great deal of improvement. He is far more engaged, has not had a single discipline infraction since you and I last spoke, and he's been staying on top of most of his homework and assignments. I'm very proud of his progress."

Cloud leaned back in his seat, glancing over the report card again before he set it down in front of him.

"That's good," he replied, feeling relieved that this conversation wasn't going in the direction he had feared it might.

Marle offered him a smile. "Do you have any idea what seems to be helping?" she asked him.

Cloud resisted the urge to sigh. At this point, he knew damn well what was helping, but if he said it out loud, it would only make his torn feelings over the entire situation further entrenched.

"He's been taking piano lessons," he finally responded.

Marle's smile widened, and Cloud suspected she had known all along. "He had mentioned it to me. He's doing so well in music class, so it's no surprise to me that he would excel with a private tutor. And Tifa is great, isn't she?"

Cloud didn't say anything, instead looked down at the report card as if it held great, significant interest to him.

Marle noticed his discomfort, and she leaned forward in her seat. "I think this is a great opportunity for you and Denzel both," she advised, her tone almost a little too knowing. Cloud looked up at her then, meeting her pale blue eyes as she continued to smile at him. "It's important that Denzel is involved in an activity that he really enjoys, and I believe it may be something that you both can bond over. It certainly can't be easy to step up to be his adoptive father this way, so it never hurts to find little ways to help your relationship develop."

Thinking again of his raging dreams and nightmarish memories that morning, Cloud looked away from her again, this time down at his gloved hands.

"I want you to know, Cloud, that I think you are doing a fair job with him, despite the difficult circumstances this presents to you both. I know that it is very, very challenging for you, but you both will be okay in the end. Though I still think counseling would help you both," she added with a wink.

Cloud looked up at her finally, trying to repress the memories that threatened his skull with pain and the corners of his eyes with tears. "T-thanks."

"Besides," she added, offering him a smile, "If you're nice to Tifa, maybe she'll invite you both for a home-cooked meal. She's probably the best cook this side of Midgar."

Cloud didn't dare acknowledge that comment; deep down inside he knew this information already.

"Anyway, I hope that you both will keep it up," Marle informed him. "I expect to see A's on his report card next cycle. He's a very bright child."

Later, he thanked Marle and picked Denzel up from the gym, and seeing the happy look on the kid's face, decided to take him out for dinner instead of another night of cheese pizza or Wutaian takeout. He drove his bike to a family-style restaurant in Sector4, one that served classic Midgarian food like barbecue and steaks and grilled seafood and pasta.

As soon as he realized what was happening, Denzel's excitement expanded twofold, and Cloud couldn't stop himself from grinning down at the kid as they walked together inside of the establishment.

"I heard school is going better," Cloud said to him after they'd both ordered burgers. "Your report card was a lot better this time."

"Thanks, Cloud," Denzel responded quietly, sipping his soda.

Cloud watched him intently, taking a swig of his draft beer. "How are you liking the piano lessons, Denzel?"

Instantly, Denzel perked up even further. "They're fun, Cloud. I'm learning a lot. I like them."

"Good," Cloud answered, and then, he found that he couldn't stop himself. "What about the teacher?"

Denzel smiled even brighter, confirming what Cloud already knew. "She's really nice, Cloud. I like her a lot. And she talks about you too."

Cloud felt his neck warm. "Me? Oh yeah?"

Denzel nodded. "She says how nice and cool you are," he replied. "Marlene thinks she likes you. Do you like her too, Cloud?"

Cloud tried to suppress his blush, but he already knew his face would betray him. He brought up his beer to hide it, taking a careful sip.

"She's a nice lady," he finally answered, and quickly shifted gears in the conversation. "Anyway, I'm proud of you, Denzel. A's next cycle, okay?"

"Okay," Denzel replied.

Cloud shared a smile with Denzel at that, but deep inside, he was cratering, thinking about Tifa and knowing he was in deep shit.

---

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 |23rd March

Resilience

"Higher, Tifa. You should be aiming for the shoulder."

Tifa sighed, clearing away from Zangan with a small backward leap, her sneakers squeaking as she skidded across the mat. They were training inside of his small dojo in Sector7, where Tifa often came early in the mornings to condition her body with the sensei she had been training with for the last decade.

She exhaled a little, wiping a line of sweat from her brow as she looked back at him. Zangan, at least thirty years older than she, was tall and still well built for his age, his skin ruddy and leathery from years of exposure, his dark gray hair combed back into a neat tail at the base of his skull. He was one of the most renowned martial artists on the Planet, and when Tifa had first come to Midgar, it had been a combination of past failures and her fear of living alone in the city that had driven her to seek out his tutelage.

She had excelled as one of his pupils, even participating in local competitions against some of his other students for sport, especially when she had still been in college. But in recent years, ever since she had developed the Syndrome, she found herself less and less able to keep up with the demands of his training, finding herself losing some of her skill. Her body simply could not handle the rigors of martial arts the way that it had before she'd been diagnosed.

Zangan, well aware of her condition, only took a small amount of mercy on her. He believed that the key to her survival of this miserable disease was to keep her body in pinnacle shape. And so he continued to push her, even when sometimes she wanted to crumble to her knees in tears from the pain.

As it were right now, as they practiced a succession of roundhouse kicks. This move had been one of Tifa's best; years ago, her legs were as fluid in a fight as a ballerina's. But now, the stiffness in her joints made flexibility difficult, and she found herself struggling to execute them with the same height and precision that she once could, no matter how many times she tried how many ways Zangan pressured.

"Again," Zangan insisted, but Tifa shook her head slowly, backing up again and turning toward one of the benches by the wall.

"I… I need to sit down."

Zangan remained rooted in place, watching as Tifa sank to a seat on the bench, clapping her gloved hands together a few times, kicking up a dust cloud of talcum before she rested her palms on her knees. She noticed him staring intently at her from where he stood, but Tifa could only close her eyes, feeling the burn in her knees and willing it away.

Thinking about the constant pain her body seemed to be in - the aches amplified these past few weeks - only made the corners of her eyes sting with the real possibility of tears, and it was enough to terrify her as she thought about the sparkling dust and the red, bloody pain that would accompany it.

The truth was, though, that it had become more and more difficult for her to suppress the seemingly constant need to cry.

She looked down at her sneakers, sensing Zangan as he approached, unwrapping and rewrapping the bandaging around his own wrists in an absent manner. Tifa looked up when he settled on the bench beside her.

"Tifa," he began in a low, serious tone. "You seem distracted, unfocused. There is less precision in your form. What is going on? I have noticed this for several weeks now."

Tifa turned away from him, focusing her attention on her hands. She realized that they were trembling, that they were paler and dryer than usual, despite the talcum dusted into them and the bandaging she wrapped around them for her training. Her knuckles were red and cracked, and as she turned her palms, she could just barely see the faint lines of her veins through her skin.

She didn't answer Zangan right away, and after a moment, he cleared his throat expectantly.

"Tifa," he began, "Please. Tell me what is going on."

Tifa closed her eyes. After she had left Nibelheim, her relationship with her father had teetered on the sharp end of a knife's edge. In the year before she had left for college, so much had happened that had resulted in such brokenness, and most of it stemmed from their relationship and from the fallout of her mother's death. In Midgar, she had been very, very alone those first few years.

Like Barret, Zangan had become somewhat of a father figure to Tifa. She had sought out his training not long after she came to the city, wanting to become strong enough to protect herself now that she was living alone in Midgar. And aside from that, Tifa had come to realize that her weakness was the reason that so much had fallen apart around her, the reason that things had become as bad as they had. Zangan's training offered an avenue to both the physical and mental strength she believed she was lacking.

She trained with him relentlessly those first few years in Midgar, and soon, their relationship had developed far beyond sensei and student, beyond mentor and mentee. She came to see Zangan as family, knew that she could confide in him about her troubles. Though unlike Barret, who doted on Tifa as if she truly were his own daughter, Zangan refused to let Tifa wallow in self-pity or go easy on herself because of her condition. When she had first been diagnosed, he did not relent in the rigors of her training, pushing her despite the way that the pain continued to flare and build inside of her body. He insisted that she push through no matter how her nerve endings screamed and protested.

When she had been released from the Midgar Philharmonic, crying stardust between her fingers, Zangan had demanded that she wipe her eyes and persevere.

"Weakness feeds off fear and inadequacy, off of inaction and complacency," he had told her when she whined about the unfairness of everything that was happening. "You must not allow yourself to become defined by this disease or by the injustices of the world around you, Tifa."

It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but it was a lesson that Tifa had learned and learned well. It had helped carry her through the next few years so that she was able to find a new purpose in life when she could no longer play the piano, helped her to keep her body in top shape even as it combatted her exertion.

She sighed slightly, folding her hands together to keep them from quivering. She closed her eyes again, swallowing to push down the constriction in her throat and to stem the tide of burning tears that threatened, and she looked up at Zangan.

"I… I have not been well, Master Zangan," she finally admitted. "I've been dealing with some things, and they have made my symptoms worse."

Zangan frowned deeply at this, crossing his arms over his chest, the thick muscles of his biceps pulling at the fabric of his robes. "What sort of things, Tifa? You know I do not like such vague talk."

Tifa sighed, turning away from him with a shake of her head. "There is… someone from my past in my life again. We have a very complicated history. I had accepted that he is the reason I'm sick, a long time ago. Reuniting with him now hasn't been easy for me, and I'm not sure how to handle it."

"Have you spoken to your doctor about this?" Zangan asked.

"Not yet," Tifa admitted quietly.

Zangan was quiet for a moment, ponderous. Then he turned to her, offering her a slight nod. "This man… was he someone you loved, my child?"

Tifa was focusing on her hands again, this time wringing her fingers together as she wondered how Zangan knew she was talking about a man. "I did. Zangan, before I left Midgar, we were in love. We had a plan for our future together. We wanted to be together forever, promised that we would… as stupid as that sounds for teenagers to vow. But I so believed that we would. I believed in him, believed in us. And then… everything fell apart."

Tifa was still looking down at her hands, but Zangan was studying the profile of her face, waiting in quiet contemplation for her to finish her thought. When she remained silent, he prodded her on.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" he asked her gently. "Perhaps it will help you if you unload it from your heart."

Tifa considered this for a moment. She had been careful about talking too much about what had happened between her and Cloud all those years ago, about the summer where their promises had blown up like bombs in their faces. She never shared the full story with Barret, had only given her doctor and her therapist the bare minimum that she thought they needed to effectively treat her. She herself avoided recalling the details of those days as much as she could, hadn't thought about them for years, shoving those memories away into the farthest recesses of her brain and barricading them away.

Until Cloud had shown up in front of her bar, bringing his adoptive son to her for piano lessons.

She sighed, stretching out her fingers as she dropped her hands into her lap again. She felt the tendons sear, the joints in her knuckles flaring with pain as she extended each long, graceful digit, her eyes falling to the chips in her nail polish.

She trusted Zangan, knew that his advice and guidance was sound. Yet the prospect of unearthing these demons was daunting, and she was careful to not release too many of them into the wild.

"We started dating when I was in my final year of high school," Tifa began. "He had already graduated. My father… my father did not approve of him. He forbade me to see him. I didn't listen, though. And… it got me into some trouble. I started to become very rebellious, and it made my father angrier. It wasn't helped by the fact that things at home were getting very bad. But… this boy I was with… he was the only person who made me feel happy or loved during all of this, Zangan."

Tifa tried to force steel into her throat, feeling the way that reliving these old memories was dragging stabbing sensations throughout her entire chest. She realized her hands were shaking again. Zangan remained silent at her side, watching her intently as he waited for her to finish.

She swallowed roughly to keep the tears at bay. "Remember when I told you that I wanted to train with you because I was afraid of living by myself in Midgar?"

Zangan nodded slowly in reply.

"That wasn't entirely true," Tifa continued. "At least, it wasn't the only reason. Really, the reason I wanted to get stronger to be able to protect myself was because… something happened to me back home in Nibelheim. After my mother died, I… I did something stupid, and I got hurt. Cloud tried to save me, but it was too dangerous, and we both got hurt. And my father… he got angry again. He got really angry."

"Cloud?" Zangan finally interrupted.

"The boy I loved."

Man, screamed the back of Tifa's mind, conjuring an image of Cloud every time he came to Seventh Heaven to pick Denzel up.

Zangan simply hummed in response, mulling her words over after that.

"I… became very depressed after that. I continued to defy my father. Cloud was the only person who listened to me. We spent the entire summer together, sneaking around my father so he wouldn't find out. But Nibelheim is a small town, and word got around to him. He was so upset, he even threatened Cloud's mother."

Tifa covered her face with her hands, realizing that the tears were pricking the corners of her eyes, sharp and painful, and the last thing she wanted to do was have an episode in front of her sensei. She swallowed several more times, then inhaled, her right knee beginning to jitter.

Sensing her building anxiety, Zangan gently rested a leathery palm to her shoulder. Tifa felt a warm wave of tranquility descend over her, and she exhaled slowly, calming herself enough to continue.

"Despite all of this, Cloud and I were too in love. So we didn't listen to anyone. And… at the end of the summer, my father caught us for the final time. He lost it. After that, he wouldn't let me out of the house. He sent me to Midgar three weeks early. He cut off my PHS and threatened me if I spoke to Cloud ever again. So… I broke up with him before I left Midgar, and we never spoke again."

Tifa stopped, leaving out the more gruesome and humiliating details of those final weeks.

"I see," Zangan responded after a long moment of silence. "You never reached out to him even after you were alone in Midgar?"

Tifa shook her head. "No, I was afraid of my father, Master. And then I learned that Cloud had been conscripted. He also did not take our break-up well. He… was furious with me for obeying my father. So… I didn't want to make things worse. I thought it best to just let go."

"And then you got sick," Zangan added, rather harshly.

Tifa flinched, closing her eyes again. She had never thought that the abrupt severance of her relationship with Cloud had been just as responsible for her illness as had been the entire tragedy of their romance.

"You say you've been reunited with him after all this time?" Zangan prodded her when she fell silent in response.

Tifa nodded, slowly, still fighting to keep the ugly tears from spilling forth with their glittering violence. "He's started to bring his son to me for piano lessons. We started to talk but… it got ugly quick."

Zangan bristled slightly. "This sounds complicated, Tifa. He has a child? Is he married?"

Tifa shook her head, crossing her arms under her breasts. "No, it isn't like that. He adopted his friends' child after they passed away."

"I see," Zangan intoned. "Tifa, please look at me."

Slowly, Tifa lowered her arms and turned to Zangan. His coal-colored eyes were intense and focused on her face, unmasking her and reading into her soul as he studied her. It made her feel vulnerable, her emotions fully on display now that she had confessed to him what had happened all those years ago.

"I am no expert in Star Scar, the way that your doctor may be," he told her calmly, "But my beliefs about the connection of the body, the mind, and the heart go back as far as the Planet itself. You cannot resolve your health unless you confront what clearly seems to be some seriously unresolved issues. And as you know, Tifa, things happen for a reason. I do not believe this man and his son suddenly entered your life by mere chance."

"What are you saying, Master Zangan?" Tifa asked him.

Zangan reached over her lap for one of her hands.

"Do you still love this man, Tifa?"

Tifa felt her lungs tighten, her heart ceasing its rhythm for several beats before it suddenly began to ricochet. Her mind was suddenly splintered by the question, the hot, vengeful tears gathering at the base of her ducts and her throat feeling as if knives had been plunged into both sides of it.

She had been avoiding thinking about that question for the last ten years, but in the weeks since Cloud had brought Denzel to her piano lessons, it had been at the front and center of her mind, and it was the reason that his questions that afternoon in the bar had upset her so much, the reason that she could not stop crying and the reason that she was relapsing so badly.

As if to illustrate this point, the tears finally burst free, and Tifa covered her face with her hands, her fingers now stained with blood as the tiny twinkling stars broke free, coating her lashes and her skin and causing her heart to clench inside of her chest as if wrapped tight inside of a fist.

Zangan was at his feet at once, leaving Tifa's side for just a moment as she sobbed. He returned moments later with tissues and a damp cloth, and by now, the entire front of her tank top was sullied with sparkling dust. She wiped the corners of her eyes with her knuckles as Zangan gently pulled her hands away, and carefully, he began to wipe away the blood and the stars from her face and hands. He offered her the tissues, and Tifa pressed them to the corners of her eyes as she sniffled and gasped, trying to regulate her breathing.

"I suppose the answer is yes," Zangan sighed calmly, dropping her hands back into her lap. He sat back, watching her for a moment, and Tifa felt the burn from his stark stare searing away at her flesh. She turned to him, unwilling to confirm or deny his statement.

"Tifa," he went on, "You must talk to him and resolve this, no matter the outcome. If you allow it to continue to fester without confronting it, you may not live another ten years to wallow in the misery of your past and what has been unrequited."

Tifa gasped to inhale air, nodding her head slightly, knowing Zangan was right, but fearing how she would ever handle this, especially when Cloud had taken to pointedly avoiding her after their last conversation.

"I am not strong enough, Master," she confessed, looking down at her weak, cracked hands again.

Zangan rose to his feet. "Nonsense," he insisted, offering her his hand. "You have trained for a decade to be not only strong in body, but in heart and in will. Come. Let us duel. I will test you, and only I will determine if you are truly strong enough, Tifa-san."

For the first time that afternoon, Tifa smiled, accepting Zangan's hand as she wiped the final residue of stars from her eyes.

An hour later, she had finally defeated her sensei against the mat.

---

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2007 |27th March

Every Note Played

"Okay, Denzel, that's very good. I'd like you to try to play the following piece, since you can read the notes now. Relax your shoulders and focus on the pacing of the melody, okay?"

"Okay, Tifa," Denzel agreed, curling his fingers over the keys.

Tifa turned the pages of sheet music above the piano's keys a few times before she found the tune she was looking for. It was a very simple melody, a short string of a few key notes, a song that had been one of the first she had learned a long, long time ago when she had first sat down at her mother's piano bench as a small child. It had been the first song that her mother had taught her, and it was a melody that she would never forget, carrying with it memories of a happier, far-gone time.

She sat back, watching as Denzel read the notes quietly to himself before preparing his fingers to skirt across the keys. It was now his sixth weekly lesson with her, and he had gone in those few short weeks from learning the keys and how to hold his hands above them with precision, to learning to read the notes and to now being able to follow and play a tune. She was satisfied, impressed even, with his progress, and she was looking forward to sharing her thoughts with Cloud when he arrived to pick him up that afternoon.

Though, she had to admit, watching as Denzel began to play, that her motivations were a little bit selfish and not altogether driven by wanting to update him on how his son was progressing in lessons.

Do, Re, Me, Ti, La. Do, Re, Me, So, Fa, Do Re Do.

Tifa smiled, nodding her head at Denzel and clapping her hands at him encouragingly a few times. "That was excellent, Denzel!" she praised him. "You are doing such a great job. Here, let me demonstrate for you one more time. I want to see you put a little bit more passion into that fourth note."

He nodded, and Tifa leaned over the keyboard, putting her hands into place. She began to strike the keys in a similar fashion, playing the same melody.

Do, Re, Me, Ti -

Abruptly, she stopped, her right wrist locking up as her fingers drifted toward the fifth key. Wincing, she pulled her hands away from the piano, rubbing her wrist with her left hand as she felt the pain run in a hot line up her nerves, all the way to her elbow.

Seeing the discomfort sketched on her face, Denzel leaned over and glanced at her. "Are you okay?" he asked her softly.

No, Tifa wanted to scream, wincing as she looked down at her hands. I will never be okay, not until I fix things with your father.

"I'm fine," she answered instead. "Just a little stiffness. Why don't you practice a few more times?"

Tifa kept her hands away from the ivory for the rest of their lesson, listening to the notes that Denzel played as he rehearsed the same tune over and over again. It became lodged in the back of her mind, bringing alive memories from long ago when she had played this simple euphony for a blond-haired boy who'd laid smirking on her bed behind her, the throb and the inflammation in her extremities reminding her once again of the terrible juncture that they both stood at.

Sometime later, Tifa was trying to build her confidence again as she walked with Denzel back downstairs to the bar on the first floor. It was quiet for a Sunday; since the weather was beginning to grow warm and nice again, it was likely that many of Seventh Heaven's regulars were taking advantage and spending their weekend afternoons outdoors. Barret was out again with Biggs and Wedge, leaving only Jessie running the bar while Marlene sat at a booth coloring, a handful of patrons quietly eating a late lunch.

"Denzel!" Marlene called to him, waving him over to her the way that she did every Sunday afternoon when Denzel was finished with his lesson. The children were quickly developing a bond, and Tifa did not miss the way that both their faces would crumple in disappointment whenever Cloud would arrive and quickly usher Denzel out of the door.

Smirking to herself as she watched Denzel make his way over to Marlene's table, Tifa had already resolved to fix that today.

With that thought, she headed to where Jessie stood behind the bar, more engrossed in her PHS than anything. When Tifa approached, she set the device down and lifted her dark hazel eyes.

"Hot Dad isn't here yet," she teased, and Tifa felt her face warm up.

"Listen, Jessie," Tifa began, brushing her hands over the front of her sweater. "I need to talk to Cloud when he arrives. Like… in private. It's important. Can you keep an eye on Denzel while he plays with Marlene for a little while?"

"In private?" Jessie asked, not even acknowledging Tifa's request. "Oh, this sounds juicy already. Are you making up with your old boyfriend, Tifa?"

As basic as Jessie made it sound, Tifa hated how close to accurate her friend actually was. Not wanting to admit it, she slowly shook her head.

"Listen, it's… complicated. And most of it is concerning Denzel's lessons, anyway. Just keep… keep both kids busy, okay? Feed them some bar pies, or something."

"Of course," Jessie laughed, turning away to tend to a customer, just as Tifa heard the roar of a motorcycle outside.

Inhaling deeply, Tifa looked down at her appearance. She had dressed in a royal blue sweater and a pleated black mini-skirt that was held up by thick leather suspenders, her legs wrapped in black, thigh-high nylons. She was wearing patent-leather combat boots, and she'd pulled her hair into a low ponytail, swept to one side of her skull, her fringe bordering her forehead and the sides of her face. She had even rimmed her eyes with dark liner.

Over the years, especially since she had joined the Philharmonic, Tifa had found herself beginning to dress much more conservatively than she had when she was younger, choosing pants and blouses and simple, muted colors that didn't draw too much attention. But now, she admitted to herself and no one else that she was going for a look that deep down inside she knew that Cloud liked, that she hoped would catch his eye when he walked through the front door.

She licked her lips, tasting the honey-sweet gloss she was wearing, and then stepped from behind the bar to wait for him by the door.

It was moments later when he finally entered, his boots thunderous against the floorboards. He was dressed in dark jeans and a faded t-shirt under his leather riding jacket. His hair was mussed from riding his bike against the winds, spikes tearing in every direction.

He clearly hadn't been expecting her to be standing right at the door, because when he saw her, he stopped with a start, his blue eyes going wide. Coyly, Tifa crossed her arms behind her back, offering him a smile as she realized his eyes were mapping a trail of her entire body from head to toe, drinking her appearance in. His bottom lip dropped open a little bit before he blinked.

"Hi, Cloud," she greeted him in a soft voice.

He stared for a moment longer, his eyes hovering in a line over her legs and then her hips, before he dragged them back up to her face. Her smile widened as he seemed to remember himself, and he tossed his head a little, leaning back in the most casual stance he could muster as his eyes lifted to hers again.

"Tifa," he greeted cooly, and Tifa wanted to shake her head at how hard he was working to restrain himself.

"Denzel is having pizza with Marlene," she told him, already seeing the way he was looking for the boy so that he could drag him off and flee. "I thought that, maybe, we could talk for a while and let them hang out together for a bit. Marlene has really taken to him."

Cloud started to scratch the back of his neck anxiously, and now, he was no longer looking at her face, but was staring at the floor. "Uh, yeah, but talk about what? Your notes about his lessons have been really helpful."

"Why don't we go up to the studio?" she said instead of answering his question. "It will be nice and quiet there."

Cloud opened his mouth as if he were about to protest, but impulsively, Tifa wrapped her hand around his upper arm, folding her palm over the soft leather of his jacket. Despite that barrier between them, she instantly felt his warmth radiate toward her, and Tifa realized in the back of her mind that it was the first time that she had touched him since they'd been reunited, the first time she'd touched him in ten years.

Cloud almost jumped at the sensation, as if she had scalded him with a burn. But he said nothing, seemingly frozen with the realization of what was happening. Instead, he let her gently lead him toward the back of the bar and the stairs that led up to the studio. Tifa's heart was now running a mad sprint in her chest as she began to climb the stairs, and she could feel Jessie's smirking eyes burning holes into her back as she watched them disappear.

The studio was a small, open space, sparsely decorated and furnished aside from a few cheap paintings and photographs of Tifa's past performances and framed copies of her degrees on the walls, a couple of couches and a small desk in one corner. Still holding onto Cloud's arm, she instead led him to the piano by the window, releasing him once they approached the bench.

"Sit with me?" she bade him, her heart now taking up residence in her throat as she carefully slid into a seat on the bench. She looked up to find Cloud hesitating, hovering over her and staring at the small bench that proposed an intimate arrangement, one designed for teacher and student. She swallowed the fear and the trepidation that he might reject her and flee back downstairs, blinking up at him as she waited for the worst to happen.

But after a moment passed, she saw something flicker across the sapphire in his irises, and he quietly found a seat next to her on the piano, keeping a respectable distance, only sitting with his back to the keys instead of facing forward the way that she was. It resulted in them being able to look one another right in the eyes, and Tifa felt herself grow warm as memories of them sitting together in this exact same manner years ago in the quiet confines of her bedroom returned to her.

Cloud was stiff at her side, leaning over his knees, clasping his hands together between them. He said nothing, clearly waiting for her to begin the conversation, and Tifa was worried that her heart was too loud in her chest and would betray everything she was thinking and feeling.

The sudden ache in her knees reminded her of why she was doing this, and she swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, turning to him.

"About Denzel's lesson -"

"Is that really what you wanted to talk to me about?" Cloud interrupted her, leaning back again so that he could look at her face. His eyes were now bright and blazing blue, the mako in them a flaring verdant rim that was glowing with unrestrained emotion. Feeling slightly stunned by his instant reaction, Tifa wondered what was living inside of him that had him reacting so strongly already.

"I - " she hesitated, but Cloud's eyes didn't leave her face, and suddenly she was glued there, unable to turn away. She felt herself grow distracted by the war of colors in his eyes, once again thinking back to what she remembered them to look like, a deep, cerulean blue that had not been infected by that hazy neon green.

"Tifa," he prompted her when she sat there with her mouth open but silent, and something in the low, strained way that he said her name, in the tight tone of it, had her feeling terrified but hot again, pressing her thighs together even as she felt afraid she might pass out from the anxiety that was suddenly choking her.

Steeling herself, she straightened her back a little, offering him her smile, a trench coat around all of her naked fear and worry. "You're right, Cloud. Denzel continues to do well. He told me he's doing better in school, too. But that's not why I wanted to talk to you."

"So what is it?" he demanded.

Tifa stared back at him, their eyes tethered by an unseen string. She realized that he was trying to snap at her, doing his best to be rude and disinterested, but that he was failing miserably. Every time he responded, despite the shortness of his words, his actual tone betrayed too much softness, much the way that he had spoken to her all those years ago.

It gave her just a tiny sliver of hope, a single ray of bright sunshine in her world that had become clouded over with darkness.

Tifa swallowed carefully, lifting her hands and letting them hover, ghostlike over the keys. She looked down at her fingers; they were no longer as dry as they had been days ago. She'd spent so much time rubbing lotion into her skin, soothing the sore joints and muscles that lived beneath. And her nails were now smooth and shiny and freshly polished, a light blue color that matched her sweater.

"A few weeks ago, you asked me why I never contacted you, or responded to your letters or emails," Tifa began softly, and she watched Cloud instantly tense up, leaning forward again as he shook his head unhappily and turned away from her, clearly not wanting to have this conversation. But Tifa pushed on despite the dramatic shift in his body language. "I just wanted to apologize to you, Cloud. My… my father closed all of my accounts. I never received any letters. I got a new PHS when I moved to Midgar and… I thought about trying to find you, especially when I learned that you had been drafted into the Shinra army. But… I was scared."

She heard Cloud sigh at her side, and then, he had his head in his hands, leaning even further across his knees as if in despair.

But Tifa refused to stop until she had said everything that she had resolved to. "It was wrong of me to do that, Cloud, especially after everything that we had between us. I… I can blame my father for a lot, but I can't blame him for my own cowardice and my own failures. I could have reached out to you if I wanted to… but I was too afraid. And so I didn't. I'm sorry."

She waited, the silence thick as Cloud wallowed quietly at her side, still bent over and looking at the floor, holding his head. She realized as a moment passed that he was trembling, and she had to restrain herself from reaching out to touch his shoulder, to run her fingers consolingly through his wild yellow hair.

"It's kind of funny. Us going our separate ways, thinking that must be it... that we'd never meet again—when all that time, we were both right here in Midgar, could have come back to each other without my father or anyone else knowing. But I was too scared," Tifa paused, chuckling darkly to herself, letting her fingers finally touch the ivory, accidentally pressing out a single, somber note. "And then here of all places we finally do meet again, after all this time."

Finally, Cloud sat back up, leaning back so that their eyes could meet. Tifa felt her heart leap into her chest, and she looked at him, his eyes almost fully blue, swirling with sadness.

"It's not your fault," he said softly. "I could have found you too. I… was scared too. And angry. I was acting like a child when you didn't respond to me. And I was really upset with you for breaking up with me."

Tifa lowered her eyes in silent response, letting her fingers drift across the keys, pressing into them gently as she struck a few notes, the same one that she had taught Denzel just a little while ago.

Do, Re, Me, Ti, La. Do, Re, Me, So, Fa, Do Re Do.

When she'd finished playing the melody, she looked up at Cloud to find him staring at her hands on the keyboard. Suddenly self-conscious and aware of the burn of his eyes on her flesh, she let her fingers slide away, dropping her hands into her lap.

"Do you remember that?" she asked, glancing up at him, finding his dark blue eyes on her face. As soon as hers connected with his, she felt herself flood over with warmth, her heart echoing as it picked up speed.

"Yeah," Cloud breathed as if she'd stolen the air from his lungs. "You said it made you think of me."

Tifa hummed, smiling a little, nodding at the memory in the back of her mind. "I don't know what it was, but something about that melody reminded me of the way that you used to be."

Cloud scoffed lightly at that, shaking his head slightly as he turned away, and Tifa wondered if she had said the wrong thing.

"Yeah," Cloud murmured after a moment.

An awkward silence developed, Cloud now looking down at his boots. Tifa turned to face the keys again, feeling her insides flutter with anxiety, feeling the warmth from Cloud's body radiate in her direction. Desperate for something to happen, she impulsively dropped her hand to his arm again, startling him into looking back at her again.

"Cloud?"

"Yeah, Tifa?"

"I… I just want us to be able to start over again," she blushed, feeling herself heat up as she thought about the implications of those words., and she quickly continued. "You know… as friends?"

Cloud stared at her so long that Tifa began to regret the words, her heart racing, the aches across her shoulders and her lower back pulsing. Maybe she was asking for too much, was placing too high expectations on him. But Cloud soon was nodding, giving her a ghost of a smile.

"Yeah…" he responded. "I think we can try, Teef."

Her heart fluttered at the nickname, realizing she hadn't heard him call her that endearing name in over ten years. It made her hands tremble, and she balled her hands together in her lap, unable to stop the smile that pulled across her lips when she glanced back at him.

Later that night, long after Denzel and Cloud had left, long after Seventh Heaven had closed and Tifa had headed home to her apartment complex in Sector7, she still felt the aches and the deep pains in her body, still found her vision blurring when she tried to focus.

But, at least, for the first time in weeks, she didn't cry herself to sleep that night.

---

[ μ ] - εγλ - 1996 | 1st October

Distractions

Tifa drummed her pen against her notebook in a slow, rapping pattern, staring out of the window, not even half-listening to her teacher prattle on about uniform continuity as he demonstrated an equation didactically on the board. She was focused on the sky, how bright and blue it was today with the stream of yellow sunlight beaming in and bouncing off of the glass windows of the schoolhouse, of the puffy white clouds that floated by in a slow formation, thinking about how the colors reminded her of Cloud, the boy with the bluest eyes she had ever seen.

She hadn't written a single note into her notebook all period, she'd been so distracted thinking about him. It had been that way the entire day, had been that way every day since the moment they had shared on top of the water tower, his lips suddenly pressed warmly to hers, his arm around her waist in the most gentle, careful hold she had ever felt. The kiss had only lasted a few seconds, but it had been the most electrifying thing she had ever experienced. In all the times she had kissed Jody in the back seat of his car or in the middle of the school gym during a dance, or after one of their dates at the movies or the diner, she had never felt the sort of heat and thrill that she had felt after that closed-mouth kiss with Cloud under the stars.

When they'd finally separated, Cloud had grinned at her, and they remained at the top of the water tower for a little while longer, before it grew late and Tifa told him that she needed to get home. Carefully, they climbed down the ladder again, walking arm in arm back through the streets, and Tifa was so enamored and lost in her thoughts that she'd forgotten discretion, had forgotten that she had a boyfriend who would lose his mind if he found out she was spending time with another boy.

When they arrived home, before they went their separate ways, Cloud had pulled her in close and bent down, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek that ended up being more along the line of her jaw, dangerously close to her neck, and for the rest of the night, Tifa could not stop herself from fantasizing about him, hugging her pillow as she muffled her giggles and screams into it, already anxious to see him again.

In the days that followed, Tifa only saw him in the evenings - he had taken to flagging her attention across the short distance between their houses by calling her name through his window or occasionally throwing marbles at hers if it was closed, which she always chastised him for. She wanted badly to give him her number, but she was terrified of her father answering the phone if he called, and so they relied on unconventional methods of communication.

It had only been four days since their date, but the weekend was fast approaching again, and already Tifa was imagining ways that they could spend time together without anyone knowing anything about it. She could always bring him back to the water tower, at least until the weather grew too cold to sit out there. They had decided that they would make it their special spot, and something about that not only thrilled Tifa, but made her entire body feel hot, made her feel as if she were doing something forbidden and naughty.

Biting her lip as she stared absently out of the window, she realized with an embarrassed fascination that being with Cloud made her want to do things that were forbidden and naughty.

"Tifa."

Tifa blinked at the terse call of her name, tearing her eyes away from the window. She glanced up to find Jody standing over her, his hand holding his backpack over one shoulder, his other hand in the pocket of his corduroys. He was leaning over to one side, and the angle of his head as he stared down at her had a spill of his wavy light brown hair falling into his forehead.

"Huh?"

"Class is over," he said through pursed lips, as if he were already frustrated. "The bell rang like, five minutes ago. I was waiting for you in the hallway."

"Oh," Tifa murmured, pulling herself out of her daze and instantly banishing the images of Cloud in his dark jeans and leather jacket from her mind. "S-sorry. I've had a lot of my mind lately. I guess I got a little distracted."

The teacher was still in the classroom, erasing the board and seemingly disinterested in both students who lingered behind. Tifa began to gather her books and supplies back into her messenger bag, pushing up to her feet while Jody just shrugged and watched her.

"Just let's hurry," Jody whined. "I told Dylan and Meiday we would meet them at the courts for a quick street ball sesh. Their girlfriends will be there too," he added, as if this was somehow supposed to impress her.

Tifa resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. "Jody, that sounds like fun, but I really need to get straight home today. I need to help my mother out with dinner, and I have to finish my paper for AP Lit. It's due on Friday."

Jody did roll his eyes at her. "You're always using that excuse, Tifa," he said. "Why don't you just say you don't want to come?"

Tifa bristled, stepping around from her desk to stand in front of Jody. "What are you talking about?"

"Never mind," Jody responded with a shake of his head. "How are you getting home, then? I don't want to have to leave and come back."

"It's fine," Tifa snapped at him sharply, making her way for the door. "I'll walk."

She heard him calling after her, but already, she was out of the classroom, in the hallway and making her way out of the school, her ears on fire with anger.

Tifa turned a hundred different scenarios over in her head of ways that she could break up with Jody for good as she made her way through town that afternoon, gripping her messenger bag tight in her hand where it was wrapped around her chest. She was seething at his audacity and his selfishness, in disbelief that he would accuse her of using her mother's illness and her family situation as an excuse to not spend time with him.

She had told him more times than she could count how things were falling apart at home. He always seemed mildly interested, offering her a listening ear but not much else before he eagerly pushed the conversation in a new direction. It soon came to the point that she no longer bothered talking to him about how her mother was fraying and her father was disengaging.

She sighed, rounding the bend of her block sometime later as she tried to push him from her mind. Just a moment after she had, she looked up to Cloud Strife sitting on his front porch, holding a notebook and a pen in front of him as he looked down, his brow furrowed as if in deep thought.

She stopped in front of his house, letting her eyes drop to his face as she admired him from the sidewalk. The sun was still high in the sky, and it highlighted the bright, aurulent gold highlights in his hair, making his tresses sparkle as if they were made of glass. He was dressed in dark clothing and his leather jacket again, and the sight of him had Jody instantly abandoned from her mind, her heart beginning to pound as she watched him for far longer than was appropriate.

"Cloud?" she finally called, getting a hold of herself.

Cloud looked up, and as soon as he saw her, he closed the notebook and got to his feet, a smile pulling his lips as he climbed down the steps and made his way in her direction. Tifa felt that new but familiar, thrilling sensation rock over her again, filling her body with an electric current that she was embarrassed to admit she felt.

"Hey, Teef," he greeted her, stepping onto the sidewalk until he was dangerously close to her, only inches away, carrying that crisp, spicy boyish scent that had clung to his skin that past Friday when they sat on the water tower together. He was offering her a sloppy, lopsided grin, one that was almost giddy, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, rocking back slightly on his heels. "You just getting home from school?"

"Yeah," Tifa responded, a little more breathily than she had been intending to.

"Doesn't your boyfriend usually drop you off?" he asked, his tone entirely playful as he cocked his head to one side, his blue eyes flickering under the sunlight as he watched her.

Tifa felt something pulse against her nerve endings, and she swallowed, her cheeks heating up as she looked away from him slightly. But even as she tore her eyes from his, she could feel herself being reeled back in by those bright cobalt pools.

"He decided that basketball was a little more important today," she answered in a quiet voice.

Somehow, Cloud managed to step even closer to her. "That sucks," he said. "I'd never choose a stupid sport over you."

Tifa blushed even harder, shaking her head at his flirtations as if that would somehow rid her of their influence. She quickly changed the subject, afraid she was going to burst into flames right there on the sidewalk if their conversation continued on in this manner.

"What about you?" she asked, gesturing to the notebook he now held at his side. "What are you up to?"

Cloud looked down, then scratched the back of his neck, finally taking a step away from her again so that the distance between them was acceptable. "Oh, I was just filling out a job application for the reactor, some paperwork they want," he responded. "Guess I'm gonna be starting there this week. No other work in town, and my mom is fed up with me being home."

Tifa nodded, offering him a little smile, but it faltered slightly when she thought about him working at the reactor, about the accidents that happened there and about the monsters that populated the mountains, about the treacherous trails that so many men had fallen from and met their deaths on. "Isn't it dangerous, though?" she asked him.

Cloud tossed his shoulders back in a slight shrug. "I mean, I've heard shit. It doesn't bother me. It'll do for now, until I figure something else out."

"You still never told me what you really like to do, Cloud," Tifa interjected softly.

Cloud smirked at her, but it was soft and warm, and he was tilting his head again. "I can show you what I like to do later," he began, his voice a little lower, and he had taken that step closer to her again. "My mom said if I get this job, she'll let me start borrowing her car. Maybe I can take you somewhere this weekend?"

Tifa opened her mouth to respond, her cheeks bright as she considered the oddities of Cloud's words, and when she figured out why they seemed so strange, she began to flush, her brain fizzling as she lost the coherency of her next thought. Cloud seemed to realize this, because he blushed and looked away, but he didn't stop smiling, his smirk transforming into an almost goofy grin.

Tifa was trying to gather her thoughts when she heard the bright squeal of tires against asphalt, and she turned to see her father's truck pull into the driveway of her house next door. Her heart began to pound, her neck flooding with heat for an altogether different reason.

Her father was out of the car in a flash, slamming his car door.

"Tifa?" he called over the fence, his voice loaded with suspicion.

"I gotta go," Tifa told Cloud at once, turning away in mild panic. What was her father doing home already?

"Wait," Cloud stopped her, and then his hand was around her wrist, pulling her back toward him. Her heart almost leaped from her chest as she realized that he was touching her right in front of her father, and the heat in her body suddenly transformed into ice, chilling her with cold fear.

"I know you don't want me calling your house," Cloud whispered, opening the notebook he was carrying. He pushed through a few pages, then scribbled something quickly with his pen. "But if you want, you can call me anytime. My mom won't care."

He tore a corner of the page he had written on, crumpled it, and then quickly stuffed it into her hand.

"Tifa!" Brian roared from next door.

Tifa whirled around quickly, but Cloud was already backing away from her.

"I'll catch you later," he said, then turned and jogged back to his house.

Set aflame with a dozen conflicting sensations and emotions, Tifa stuffed the slip of paper into her pocket, and, in somewhat of a stupor, made her way home, crossing the stone pathway up to her door.

Her father stood at the top of the path, blocking her way inside with one hand on his hip, the other holding his briefcase in his hand. He was dressed in dark pants and cowboy boots, a black shirt with tassels hanging from it beneath his wool jacket. His mustache was twisted along with his scowl, and Tifa hesitated as she approached, rarely seeing him appear so openly angry.

"What were you doing?"

She swallowed in the face of his demand. "Oh, I was just on my way home, and I saw Cloud outside, so I was -"

"Tifa," Brian cut her off, "Didn't I tell you to stay away from that boy? He's no good for you. I don't want you hanging around a kid like that."

"But Dad, I wasn't - "

"I don't want to have to keep telling you this," Brian interrupted again. "That whole family is trash. His mother has been nothing but a pain since she moved back here, all of her debts and her legal troubles back in Midgar following her back here. There's a reason she left the city, Tifa. There was a reason that she left Nibelheim in the first place."

"I don't understand," Tifa argued in a small voice, looking back at Cloud's house.

Brian softened just slightly at the tone of her voice. "Listen, Tifa - it's complicated. But some people aren't worth the effort. They have too many problems, and they'll just pull good, kindhearted souls like you down into the gutter with them, anyway. Besides, we have our own things to worry about."

Brian stepped closer then, wrapping an arm around Tifa's shoulders as he gently pulled her toward the front door.

"Your mother had a really bad episode at the grocer this morning. MaryAnn Hartley brought her home, but I had to leave work early. I need you to help out with dinner while I take care of her. And I can't worry about you being chased after by that Strife bastard, Tifa. Please. I need to know I can trust you."

Tifa tried not to flinch at his words, feeling tears at everything he had said well up in the corners of her eyes. She suddenly felt overwhelmed, as if she may be drowning by it all - her mother's declining health, her upcoming essays and schoolwork, her father's dislike for Cloud and his mother - and most of all, the deep, unrelenting feelings she felt for that blond-haired boy who made her heart palpitate and her body awaken in ways she didn't even know was possible.

She nodded, unable to form a response, but that seemed to be enough for him.

—

The rest of the afternoon and early evening progressed with Tifa feeling like she was standing on pins and needles as she moved through their home. When she'd walked inside with her father, the first sight to greet them had been her mother laying on the couch with a cold compress pressed over her eyes, limp with her arms to her sides as if she were sedated. The front of her dress was soaked with blood and covered in glittery stardust, some of the sparkles even tangled in her dark hair. MaryAnn Hartley - Jody's mother - was sitting a respectable distance from her on the couch, her hands shaking and her eyes wide. As soon as she saw Brian and Tifa enter, she'd risen to her feet, pulling at her skirts.

"This woman needs professional help," she'd declared before she left. "I gave her the medicine you told me to, Brian but…"

Tifa couldn't stand the sight of her mother limped and sullied on the couch, and so she disappeared into the kitchen after dropping her school things off in her room, working through the motions of preparing dinner while she tried to push all of her confusing, conflicting thoughts from her mind. Thankfully, her mother had taken cornish hens out of the freezer that morning, and so Tifa seasoned them and prepared vegetables for roasting, listening to her father groan and swear in the living room as he gathered her mother into his arms and carried her upstairs to clean her up.

They ate dinner silently and alone that evening in the dining room, Lorelai deep into sleep in bed and refusing to rouse to eat. Brian had already begun drinking before dinner was even served, and took a glass of whiskey with his meal, filling it twice while he ate, the air in the room growing heavier the more the amber liquid was drained away. More than once, Tifa wanted to ask what was going on, if there was a way that she could help, if her mother was going to be okay. But every time she tried, she found herself relegated again to silence by her own fear, and none of her concerns were ever spoken.

Eventually, Brian finished eating, and wordlessly pushed himself to his feet, retreating into the living room with his bottle, leaving Tifa to clean up their dishes and the kitchen by herself.

She had gone through the movements in a state of numbness, left reeling by the ricocheting highs and lows of the day. She was torn between Jody's casual disregard and Cloud's bold, sweet flirtation, between her mounting academic priorities and her family's splintering reality. After she'd showered and eaten, she settled at her desk and tried to work on her literature essay, an analysis on a classic novel called The Wrath of the Last Sunrise. She stared at both the book and her pen and paper for an eternity before she abandoned the endeavor, pushing all of it away from her in frustration.

After a while, she glanced over at her corded phone that sat on her desk. Desperately needing comfort from anywhere she could find it, she got up and fished Cloud's phone number from her coat pocket, unfurling the slip of paper and staring at the number before, impulsively, she picked up her phone and dialed his number.

"Hello?" a soft, feminine voice answered on the third ring.

Tifa swallowed carefully. "Hi, Mrs. Strife? This is Tifa Lockhart. Is Cloud home?"

"Oh, hi Tifa!" Claudia Strife greeted, her voice growing evermore cheerful. "How nice to hear from you. Cloud told me he was hoping you would call. By the way, please, just call me Claudia."

"Okay," Tifa responded, blushing that Cloud would tell his mother he was waiting for her call.

"How is your mother?" Claudia asked, and Tifa balked slightly, hating that question. "I've only seen her once since I moved back into town."

"She's… okay," Tifa answered as neutrally as possible, wanting badly to move on from this topic.

"Hold on, sweetheart," Claudia mercifully said. "I'll go tell Cloud to pick up."

Tifa felt her heartbeat pick up speed again, and she picked up her phone, walking over to her bed and stretching the cords as far as they would go from the wall as she laid down on her belly with her feet in the air. From her bed, she could glance slightly out of her window, seeing Cloud's across the way, but all she could see on his end were the flicker of shadows against the dim lighting in his room.

"Hello?"

Tifa smiled instantly at the sound of his voice, her lips pulling without any direction from her brain. Over the phone, his voice sounded just slightly deeper and a little tinnier than it did in person, and it reignited the flames that had been living dormant under her skin since she had met him almost a month ago.

"Hey, Cloud."

"Hey, Teef," he greeted her almost immediately, and she heard the distinct click as his mother hung up the other line. "I wasn't expecting you to call me so soon. Did you miss me?"

Tifa lowered her face to her cheeks, feeling the burn travel desperately throughout her entire body at the quiet provocation of his words. She tried to breathe, her brain flinging through a dozen responses in hopes that she didn't stumble stupidly through her reply.

"Maybe," was all she could muster.

He laughed at that, the sound a low rumble that vibrated through the phone's receiver and then her entire body. She twisted on the bed, glancing again out the window, but she still couldn't see anything significant across the way.

"So what's up?" he asked her. "Did you finish all of your homework?"

He was teasing her, she knew, and it made her smile again as she rolled to her back, twisting the phone's cords in her fingers. "Not really," she answered. "I have to write a paper about The Wrath of the Last Sunrise. It's the most boring book I ever read, and I don't know where to start."

"I read that last year," Cloud responded. "Well, not for school, but I found it at the library. It's a war novel."

Tifa was intrigued by this. "You read it, but not for school?"

"Yeah," Cloud admitted quietly. "That's one of those honors-level books, but I wasn't in the smart kids' English class. I just liked the book. Are you in honors?"

"AP," Tifa answered, but now she was really wondering why Cloud hadn't taken higher-level classes if he liked reading these kinds of books.

"You really like Sunrise?" Tifa repeated, dumbfounded. "I can't get into it."

"It was alright," Cloud responded. "But I read a lot, and I read that it was Sephiroth's favorite book, so I thought I'd check it out."

"Sephiroth?"

"Yeah, you know, the war hero."

Tifa shrugged. She didn't pay attention to the news much at all, and she definitely didn't like to follow stories about the war. She hated violence; it was one of the reasons she really didn't like The Wrath of the Last Sunrise.

"Are you interested in the military?" Tifa asked, finding Cloud Strife to become more and more of an enigma the more she grew to know him.

"It's cool to read about," Cloud responded. "I like history and shit like that. But I wouldn't ever want to be in the military. I hate people telling me what to do. My mom is the only one who can get away with it."

Tifa smiled at that, suddenly feeling warm again as she bit her lip and twisted her index finger through the phone's cord. "Oh, so you wouldn't like it if I bossed you around?" she taunted.

Cloud's rejoining chuckle was low and dark. "I might be able to make an exception for that," he responded, his voice almost a whisper.

Tifa giggled in response, pressing her knees together in reaction to the tenor of his voice. She resisted the urge to sigh dreamily into the phone, finding herself falling for the boy on the other end.

"Anyway," Cloud went on when she didn't say anything for a long moment, and Tifa wondered what he was doing. Was he laying on his bed like she was? Was he stretched out on his back, staring at his ceiling while he talked to her? What was he wearing?

"How was your day?"

Tifa blanched, closing her eyes. Aside from the few moments she had spent with him on the sidewalk, her day had mostly been a wreck. She'd been distracted all day in school, fought with Jody, and then returned to a newly erupting catastrophe at home. In fact, her present phone conversation with Cloud was turning out to be the highlight of it.

"Remember I told you my mom was sick?"

"Yeah?"

"She has a rare autoimmune disease," she informed him. "It's called Star Scar."

"Damn," Cloud replied. "We learned about that in Bio. Is she gonna be okay?"

Tifa closed her eyes, holding back the burn. "I don't know, Cloud. She has been getting much worse these past months. Things… haven't been easy. And my father isn't handling it well."

"He seemed pretty angry when he got home today."

"I'm sorry about that, Cloud," Tifa answered. "I just - he's very unpredictable, and he's under a lot of stress at work. He holds a prominent position on the town council."

"I know," Cloud responded, and Tifa almost thought she heard a hint of bitterness in his tone. "My mom told me."

She waited for him to add something, but he didn't. Instead, he cleared his throat.

"Hey, Teef?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm always here to listen, if you wanna talk about it."

Tifa felt her heart jump into her throat. His voice suddenly sounded softer than she had ever heard it, and it produced a different sort of heat inside of her, leaving her longing to be wrapped up tight in his arms under a pile of blankets.

"Thanks, Cloud," she finally managed, her voice small.

"My mom is letting me have the car when she's not working," he told her, switching gears in the conversation. "You wanna go out with me this Friday?"

Tifa felt her breath hitch. He had mentioned the prospect of a second date to her earlier when they were standing outside, but now, he was asking her straightforwardly. She thought about Jody for a brief moment. They hadn't yet made plans for the weekend, but already, she was inventing ways to blow him off.

"Sure," she answered, not even thinking about it. "Where do you want to go?"

"I'll figure something out," Cloud responded. "You took me out last time, so I'll find a place for us this time. And maybe we can stop by our spot on the way home."

Tifa's heart began to thunder again at his words, knowing without him flat out saying that he was referring to the water tower, and she began to wonder, to hope, if he would kiss her up there again.

"Okay," she agreed.

"Shit," he swore in the next breath. "My mom wants to use the phone. Listen, you should probably work on that paper again. If you want to talk to me some more about Sunrise, call me tomorrow afternoon. I'll be happy to give you my opinion on it if it helps your paper."

"I'd like that," Tifa responded. "Goodnight, Cloud."

"Goodnight, Tifa."

Tifa thumbed the receiver, disconnecting the call, and dropped it, the cord pulling it back across the room and dragging it across the floor. But she was too giddy and overwhelmed by her conversation with Cloud to care that she'd left it off the hook, by the way that he made her feel like she was the only person on the Planet.

And somehow, she had briefly forgotten all of her troubles, especially the ones that slept in a four-poster bed down the hall and that drowned themselves in scotch downstairs.