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Rathed M for language and romance

Chapter 8: Your Fault

Silences- how peculiar they could be. At one point, they are welcomed and are embraced with much enthusiasm. At others, like this case, they were deadly, drawn out torturously, foreboding ill fortune. No sound; not even a breath could be heard over the thunderous tension that flooded the room.

Cid took the cigarette out of his mouth and extinguished it on his palm. It wasn't to intimidate Wes, which it did, but mostly because Tifa didn't have an ashtray for him. Stepping forward, he finally broke the uncomfortable uncertainty with a sigh. "What exactly are you hoping to get by all this?" he asked Wesley.

"What do you mean?" His voice was quiet, Cid's powerful eyes doing well to frighten the adolescent.

"I mean, why are you acting this way? What do you stand to gain?"

"I don't understand," Wes admitted. "I act this way because it's just the way I am."

"Bullshit, Wes. I know your parents did right by you. Why are you giving them such a damned hard time?"

Wesley shrugged nonchalantly before standing up. "It's just the way I am," he restated. "Like it or not. Now, I've got places to be and things to do." He took a step towards the front door, but Cid wasn't having it. Taking Wesley's elbow in hand, he clenched it, and then flippantly threw him back against the sofa.

"We don't like it, Wes. But you see, what you don't get is, we don't have to put up with it. That's the beauty of being the adult."

"You just threw me," he stammered, looking up at his mother.

"It's a lot less than what you deserve," Cid countered, stepping closer and leaning over him. "If you were my son, you certainly wouldn't be able to sit down for a week, let alone would you think about mouthing off to me." He then cocked his head up a bit and looked at Tifa. "In fact, I think that would be the perfect solution. Send him to live with me for a few months. That'll straighten him out."

"I would," Tifa began, her voice a strained calm, "but his father wouldn't like that."

"Well, then Reno needs to get on the ball and punish the kid himself."

"I'm not a kid," he said defensively.

"I have yet to see evidence to prove otherwise," Cid argued.

"I'm not a kid!" he said more defiantly.

"You are in my eyes, you little punk!" Cid shouted loudly. "And you are doing a horrible job of convincing me of your claim. If you want to be treated like an adult, then you'd better damn well act like one!"

Wesley stood up again and pushed, or at least tried to push, Cid's muscled mass out of the way. It was to no avail. If anything, he just pissed him off. "WES!" Tifa shouted, rushing forward to grab him. She was too slow. Cid put his hands on Wes' shoulders and pushed him back down.

"What were you trying to do, Wes? Push me? You really thought I'd let you get away with that? Do you not know me at all? Why, I ought to kick you're a…"

"Cid," Tifa snapped, noticing that Lena Mae was standing at the bottom of the stairs. "Lena, sweetheart, go back up to your room, please."

Lena nodded but gave Cid one last glare before obliging her mother. "Well, it's obvious that Lena can see you for what you really are, Cid. An abusive monster!"

"You think I'm an abusive monster now?" he gritted. "You just wait."

"Yeah, lay one hand on me and my father will hunt you down and shoot you down like…"

"Like what?" Cid inquired, looking rather amused now. "You think your father would stand up to me? You think your mother would let him?"

"He loves me more than he loves her," he blurted out, the last word practically marinating in disgust. "He'd do anything for me. Anything."

"I think you have been taking advantage of that for too long," Cid said. "You obviously don't realize how much your father loves your mother. If he knew the way you treated her, that would end this special treatment that you think he gives you, 'cause nobody talks down to his wife. Nobody. Not even his snot nosed brat of a son."

"I'm not a brat!" he shouted, standing up again. "It's not my fault that intellectually I'd surpassed my mother at the age of four."

"But you still have a lot to learn," Cid said, pushing him down again.

"Will you stop that?"

"Why? Does it bother you?" Cid asked, his voice threatening.

"Stop defending her," he ordered, his voice louder than ever. "She's not worth it. She's a horrible mother, a horrible person, and she doesn't deserve to be treated the way you treat her. It's her fault that I'm like this. Her fault that I drink and do drugs and do things that I'm not supposed to. It's all her fault."

Tifa froze, her lips quivered, and her eyes watered. He might not have noticed, or then again, he probably did it on purpose, but his words cut her like a knife through the heart. Knife? Hell, like bullets that shot straight through her, ripping through mercilessly and hatefully.

Cid's eyes widened. "Oh, spare me!" he shouted again. "Stop pretending like you've had life so hard. I know people all around the world who would kill to have a mother like the one you have."

"Then they can have her!"

"At least they'd be more grateful, you unthankful little bastard! You don't realize how lucky you've got it! There are orphans all around this city that would die to be in your shoes. There are children whose parents beat the shit out of them for no reason, and they'd laugh at you if you told them the story of your 'hard' life. You are so damned lucky!"

"You don't understand!" he shouted. "She's a bitch! A whore! A devious little pretender that somehow landed my dad! That was his biggest mistake! Falling in love with…with…with that!"

"Newsflash, Wes! Without 'that', there would be no you."

"You don't say?" he growled.

"Damn! It is a good thing you aren't my son! I'd kill you!" Cid looked back at Tifa who he could tell was fighting back her tears. It killed him to see her like that. He turned back to Wes and stared at him coldly. "It's funny…"

"What?"

"And here I thought that Tifa's biggest mistake…was you."

"CID!" Tifa gasped. "How could you say that?"

"Well, have you heard him lately. Obviously he's the spawn of some kind of demon."

"That's my son you are talking about," she cried.

"I realize that Tifa, but that attitude right there is exactly why he gets away with his own. He's right. You two have been major pushovers and as long as you continue to defend him and make excuses for him, he'll never, never change. Admit it, Teefs. You have a monster."

"That's not fair," she sobbed again.

"Fine, Tifa. Defend him. But, if you do, don't you dare start crying when he has another outburst like this. After all, he only gets away with as much as you let him."

"Shut the fuck up!" Wes shouted, flipping Cid the bird. Cid was about to respond until Tifa, catching him completely off guard, grasped Wes' finger and bent it backwards. He shouted in pain, though she had barely hurt him at all, and yanked it away from his mother. "Don't touch me, bitch!"

Unexpectedly, Tifa lifted her hand and brought it down hard on his cheek. Before it could register in his mind what had just happened, she bent over and put her finger in his face. "Don't you ever…EVER…talk to me like that again, young man. You couldn't even begin to imagine the patience that I've wasted on you up until now. I've had it! I won't put up with anymore! Do you hear me?"

"You hit me…you hit…"

"Damn right I hit you! And I'll do it again if I have to. Don't think for a second that I'm afraid to hit you. There's not a jury on this planet that would convict me."

"…you just wait until dad finds out."

"Yes," Cid said. "And while you're telling him that she hit you, which wasn't hard at all, you're just a pansy, you might as well tell him why. The drugs, the drinking, the words you called your mother, and that gesture you gave to me. I'm sure he'll be ready to take your side after all of that."

"Oh he'll take my side! I know he will! Because I'm his only son! It wasn't like that a few years ago, but it's like that now! I'm his only son because this bitch didn't know how to protect my brother."

This time, it was Cid who backhanded Wes, and it was considerably harder than the force Tifa had used. "How dare you!" he screamed. "Where do you get off saying things like that? Oh, you're venturing down places that you aren't ready to go, Wes, so you'd better decide right now if you want to continue."

Wes didn't say a word. He just held his cheek and curled into a ball on the couch. He looked up at his mother who seemed to be a pallet of different emotions: anger, sadness, pain, regret, and helplessness. He looked at her as though she were a stranger, a disgusting hag that wasn't worth his attention. And that's all she was to him…and not even he knew why.

"Go to your room, Wes," she said ominously quiet. "I'll call you back down once your father gets home. Until then, you wait."

Cid stepped aside and Wes bolted towards the staircase and up to his bedroom. The door slammed and the sound echoed throughout the house, waking Cid's daughter, Iris. Amazingly, she had managed to sleep through all the noise up to that point. Cid took a few steps towards the stairs just as Shera descended slowly, Iris in her arms.

"That went…well…" she commented, having no other words for it. Cid rolled his eyes as he took his daughter into his arms to comfort her.

Tifa smiled, though it went against her emotions, and walked over to Cid. "She's beautiful," she swooned. "You know, she looks just like Sally had at this age. Speaking of Sally, where is she…and the boys for that matter?"

"Sally is actually at a friend's house right now," he told her, his eyes not leaving his daughter. "She'll be here before dark. Oh, will we be taking Lena's room tonight?"

"Wes'," she said, twirling her fingers through Iris' spools of yellow curls.

"Lovely," Shera said, starting to dig through her diaper bag. "Anyway, Lachlan is still in military school, but he'll be here this weekend. Owen and Patrick are camping with their troop."

"They're such good boys," Cid said, looking at Tifa significantly.

"Cid…"

"Discipline is what did it. They'd never dream of raising their voice to me or Shera. They know we'd make their backsides raw."

"Wesley really is a good boy…I think…"

But she was quite wrong on many counts. For one, he had no intention of waiting for his father to get home, like his mother had told him to do. Also, he had every intention of going to Sector Eight with his friends to drink and possibly get high. But lastly, what they were all not privy to was, that her 'good boy' was, at that very moment, climbing down the drainpipe on the side of the house and taking off down the street.