She first met him in the violent arms of a monster.
She'd heard the stories of the underlings of Midgar, the precautions of being outside at night, under the plates and barricaded from the moonlight. Savages come out at night, her neighbors had told her. Witches and wolves and the cursed all congregate and feed on the mortals. Tifa heard these rumors before moving, but she hadn't been deterred. After the massacre of her hometown, she knew monsters existed—witches and supernatural beings and even the mundane. Normal people can be monsters, too. They don't need fangs or magic. They don't need anything but the desire for blood and murder and the taste of death.
She'd come into contact with a few of these. Bloodsuckers, stalkers, the draculs. They kept to the shadows, teeth white as pearls and glimmering under the manufactured starlight of Midgar. They tended to leave her alone when she'd be out at night, riddled as she was with knives and an ornamental cross around her neck bestowed upon her by her late father.
I pray you never need this, he had said. It had been her mother's, and it was more for a keepsake and memento than anything to keep her safe.
Her blood seeps from the wound slashed across her chest. It is hot as it dribbles across her skin, cooling quickly into a deathly chill. She looks up into the face of her murderer, his face sharp and slanted, his nose a straight, perilous line, his jaw just as steep. His eyes are black and green, dilated as they always are before they take a life, draining them of their blood and their soul.
Tifa is angry, but the lack of blood makes her weak, and she can do nothing but wait for the inevitable. Will he turn her into one of them? Make her a stalker? Curse her like all the rest?
In a moment, her vision changes. The head of her murderer is gone, pulled off his neck like an apple from a tree. A dead fluid hits her in slow spirals, black and thick like molasses. She blinks, and the body is shoved to the side. Her sight is overcome with another face.
He is fair-haired and blue-eyed, rimmed with black and amber. He is not as pale as her murderer, his pupils not as blown or encroaching the rim of his irises. He does not need to feed, but he looks at her like he wants to. It's enough to make Tifa try to push herself away from him—because he's a monster, too. In the building fog of her mind, Tifa can sense it. His skin is too lurid for a mortal. His eyes are too vibrant for a human.
"I won't hurt you," he tells her, and she feels his hands grip her arm and her shoulder. "Let me help."
Tifa grits her teeth, but her words come out in a garble. "N-no…get…away…"
His face does not change at her weakened attempts to fight him off. He simply scoops her up, her knees bent across his forearm, his other wrapped around her upper back.
Her vision is quickly darkening. She thinks this must be the end of her. Her life seeps away, and the last thing she feels is the steel cords of his grip on her body. He is cold like death, and it's fitting to die in the arms of death himself.
Please, don't change me, she thinks, at last. Let me go.
"Don't worry, Tifa," he says, his voice a distant, tremulous noise in the back corner of her mind. "I won't change you. I promised I'd save you."
With that, she goes to sleep.
She sees him in her bar too frequently. He's a stalker, not just by the moniker of his name. He lives up to it with his actions, as obvious as they are in the shelter of a mortal establishment. He keeps to the corners, the shadows where he belongs. He orders the occasional liquor, and his eyes are always saturated blue and golden amber—he is never there when they are overcome with the black of want. Tifa thinks he is careful. He might not want to scare her.
And who knows? He may have taken a taste of her that night, when he beheaded one of his own kind, carelessly discarded him as if he couldn't mind one way or another if one of his fellow creatures was dead.
She glances up from behind the bar, mixing a drink. They catch eyes, and she glances away quickly.
He probably doesn't care. They are not known for their bleeding hearts. They are known for their perverse pleasures. If he had drank from her that night, it is the equivalent to the consummation of marriage in humans. It is an intimate mating and coupling. He looks at her intensely enough. He stares at her as if he'd like to behead her, too. Rip apart her limbs and eat her up, break into her skin with his sharpened teeth.
Goosebumps run along her forearms to her neck, and she hands off the drink to the patron down the line of her counter. He takes it with a nod and smile.
It is always at the end of the night where the stalker—the bloodsucker, the dracul— comes up to the bar and places his empty glass on the wooden expanse of the counter. He nurses a single drink all night, watching the frivolous camaraderie of the men and women, the affection or the anger and sorrows, until most leave before the midnight hour. Only a few brave or reckless patrons leave any later, some taking the guest rooms available if they decide not the risk may be greater than returning home to their loved ones.
He stands in front of her, watching her take the glass and place it into the sink.
"Enjoy your evening?" he asks. He asks this every time.
"I always do," she answers. "Did you find your next victim?"
Once, the words had been filled with a harsh bite. Now, they're a gentle nip of a tease.
He stares at her for a beat longer, tonight. He tends to answer with something aloof and seductive, an I only want one. Or, she's standing right in front of me.
She always answers with a shake of her head, a scoff, an eye roll. Take your flirtations elsewhere, vampire.
Tonight, he says, "I'm not giving up, Tifa."
Her goosebumps come back. They spread down her back and into her legs.
"Just because you saved me doesn't mean I owe you," she says, and she worries about how defensive she's become.
"Of course it doesn't," he says. He frowns, and the expression is a subtle crease of his brow. He doesn't show emotion often, his face a blank slate when she looks at him. It only changes as he stares at her, or when she catches his eyes across the room. "But I know what I need."
He doesn't say want, and that changes everything about his answer. Had he said want, she could easily shrug him off and suggest the door.
He waits for her to respond. She grips her hands together underneath the counter.
"How did you do it?" she asks. She has never dared to ask, before, but it must be how he looks at her—so mesmerizing and compulsory. "How did you save me?"
For once, he hesitates. "It doesn't matter."
"Did you drink my blood?" she says, her voice low. It surprises her how steady the words are. "Did you take from me?"
He stares at her for a long moment before his eyes leave hers for the counter. He seems to find his answer after an extensive few seconds, catching her eyes again.
"No," he says. "I didn't take from you. I let you take from me."
She blinks. A deep, burning chill overcomes her because that means—
"You…"
"I couldn't let you die, Tifa," he says. "I promised."
He says that occasionally. He flings that word around as if it means something. Promised.
"You didn't save me," she breathes. "All you did was tether us together. If you die, then I die."
They are connected forever, now. For the duration of her life, Tifa Lockhart's destiny will be part of the stalker's. It takes away her choice. It is not fair, but the only way to break it would be…
His face morphs subtly into an expression she's only seen once before. He smirks, and it is an amused thing.
"You forget I don't die, Tifa."
"You could, " she says. "You could become careless, just like the one you killed. Someone could stab you in the heart, and you'd…"
He shakes his head slowly, pressing his torso closer into the wood of the bar. "It's been lifetimes. My purpose to survive has always been for you."
Tifa blinks again, taking a step backward. Her bottom taps against one of the lower shelves holding bottles of whiskey. "I've heard a lot of drunken guys tell me similar things, stalker."
He tilts his head, and his eyes are too blue—they singe her like a raging burn, her body against a flicker of fire.
"There's a difference between them and I," he says. "I can give you anything you want."
"Bold words, tonight, vampire."
The muscle in his jaw clenches. Is he frustrated? Is he finally becoming angry?
The door closes behind them, and Tifa belatedly realizes all of the patrons have left. The clock shines a red 11:32 pm over the entryway. Tifa swallows, the room suddenly so silent and still.
"Cloud," he says. "Not stalker, not vampire, not bloodsucker. My name is Cloud."
Tifa's heart begins to pound quicker, deeper. A name for them is like a secret on a letter, burned to never be discovered. It is a treasure buried underneath the leagues of the sea, coveted and lost. It is an attachment, like a newly formed artery connecting to a heart another way. It is yet another thing, just like his blood that he gave her.
She furrows her brows, almost feeling furious at him. "Why would you tell me that?"
For the very first time, he smiles at her. His fangs are not elongated, only abnormally sharp against his incisors.
It is devastating how handsome he is. He's always been so beautiful, grotesquely pretty. She's tried not to think about it when she stares, tried not to think about how her lungs stutter when they always catch eyes. So magnetized, as if they've been connected before all this in someone's dream.
"You can use it anyway you want," he says. "Sell it. Give it to the Division. Let them kill me. Whatever you want. It's yours."
He takes a step back, then another, before he turns away. He heads towards the front doors.
"I can't," she calls after him, suddenly walking around from behind the bar. "You know I can't. You die, I die."
He stops, glancing up at the clock. Eventually, he turns back to face her. "That's a myth, you know. Created by my kind out of loneliness and desperation."
She pauses before daring to walk up closer. She stands within the realm of his chill, one foot away at most.
"I don't believe you," she states, her words heavy, and a deep crawling, exponential anger begins to fill her. He is a manipulator, just like the rest of them. "You've done this so I have to give you what you want. So you can drink from me and force me to be your slave and—" She shakes her head, and she's not sure why tears begin to fill up her eyes. What had she thought? That he was different? That he wasn't like the rest of them?
Because he saved her? Because he merely sits in her bar, like he's checking up on her, watching to make sure she's okay?
No. Of course not. No one is that generous, nor are they that kind. A vampire is the least of all. Leeches and parasites, all of them.
My name is Cloud.
He shifts, and she thinks he might have almost been reaching out to her.
"Don't believe everything you hear, Tifa," he answers her. "Most of us are isolated and scorned. Most of us hide away. Some forget what it's like to want something other than perpetuating the curse." He pauses, staring at her. He places his hands in his pockets, and he comes forward a step. She hasn't been this close to him since the night he carried her back to life.
"My name is yours," he says.
She crosses her arms over her chest, tightening them across her for protection from his chill and the violent beating of her heart. She stares up at him, unsure and hesitant.
It's only after he turns away again and leaves when she realizes she had never been fearful. Not even mere inches away, with one single knife on her belt.
She has never been afraid of him.
He is gone for a week. It is longer than his normal fare, and her heart jolts when she sees him enter the next evening. His booted feet are loud in her ears, cutting through the easy chatter of the tavern.
He takes his usual spot. He doesn't look up to catch her eye, and something flutters underneath her skin because he always seeks her out. It's a silly, ridiculous thing to notice. He's greedy, she reminds herself. He's given her his blood and his name, and he's been trying to seduce her with all of it, with that veil of false sincerity. He is a devil. He wants to enslave her to him. She must remember this.
She fills up a glass with his normal liquor. She crosses behind the bar and stands in front of him, her heart under more duress than usual. She feels the beat through her belly.
He looks up at her as she sets the glass down on his table. His pupils are a little wider, the amber a heavier, brassy tone, as if the rims are enameled.
"You didn't report me," he says.
"You die, I die," she answers, crossing her arms.
He shakes his head. "I told you, that's a myth—"
"Then why give it to me? Your name? Your blood?" She leans forward, placing her hands on the table. She gives him the hardened stare she gives her most unruly customers. "All the men I know only do that because they want one thing."
Regular men only want sex. Monsters like Cloud want sex, but they can also take pieces of soul and tether and enslave. It is not matrimony, but it is something much more sinister than a mere wedding ring. It is a band around her neck and her spirit. He can give her the curse without a second thought, transform her into the undead, make her life into nothing but someone and something she hates.
"Then I guess it's what you think, Tifa," he says. "I want one thing. Nothing more."
His eyes are all-consuming. They fall to the artery in her neck.
"What's wrong, tonight, Tifa?" he asks, eyes climbing back up to her face. "Did you miss me?"
She pushes up off the table, a cool sweat beginning to form along the line of her back.
"Why would I miss a monster like you?" she asks.
"I missed you," he says softly, undeterred by her words. "I miss you all the time."
Tifa takes a deep breath. Every time he speaks to her, he seems so genuine and full. It is harder to combat the look he gives her, as if he really does miss her when they are not within the same spaces of the same rooms.
He is a monster. He is a bloodsucker, desperate and isolated and lonely. Of course he misses her.
"You seem to make do without me," she breathes.
She sees the hand he leaves on the table clench into a fist.
"Doesn't change that you're the only one I want," he says.
She straightens further, shaking her head before turning to make her way back to her post behind the bar.
She's not sure how long she can stand this. His words, his eyes, his deadly routine of seduction.
He stares at her, stares and stares. By the end of the night, she notices something different in the way his gaze is trained on her.
She wonders if she can read it correctly, because she thinks she spies sadness. A small pull of the corner of his lips. It is something she sees when he isn't looking, as he ruminates over the glass filled with whiskey and as he downs it so slowly, as if it won't last the night.
He comes back the next evening. And the next.
On the third evening, he does not sit in the shadowed corners. He sits at the barstool, feet from where Tifa lingers. It is unnerving, his chill so close and overwhelming that she fumbles with a drink or two, chastising herself for being so affected.
He does not speak to her, merely watches. He stays until the last patron is gone, and she tries to act uncaring, untying her apron and hanging it on the rack at the end of the bar. She goes about her business, cleaning up the last remaining dishes in the sink.
Cloud stands when she begins her task, and he steps around the bar. He's never done this, before, and Tifa tries to settle her anxiety. Her fingers shake underneath the warm water and soap, attempting to pay no mind to what he's doing.
It's only when he comes up behind her that she stills.
"Cloud…" she says, his name a warning.
He doesn't touch her. He never touches her. He's only touched her when he saved her, and a dark, desperate part of her wonders what his hands would feel like, now, without the pall of death covering her eyes.
He's a monster, she thinks. Something crawled out of hell. A fair-haired devil.
His hands land on each side of her, trapping her against the counter. His voice is low and rumbly when he speaks.
"Tell me what you want," he says. "I need to know what you want."
The words hit her neck, and they run down her back and into her muscles. She tenses up, nearly curling away from them. They are bright and wicked against her skin.
"I want you to leave me alone," she whispers.
"Do you?" he asks after a pause. "Is that really what you want?"
She pulls her hands out of the water, grasping at a towel to dry them. It buys her a precious few seconds.
Because is it what she wants? She can't fathom him never coming into her bar again, but she cannot fathom keeping him near her—because he's nothing good. He's terrible and tragic and desperate and lonely and isolated and—
And he stalks her. He haunts her. He stares at her, not like a sack of blood, but like he aches to hold her. It is different, somehow.
She slowly turns in the cage of his arms to face him. He leans back when she does, and they are as close as they were when he picked her up off the metal grating of Midgar, her blood staining the street.
"I want you to be honest," she says, her words shaking. "I want you to prove that you aren't lying to me. You need to show me you—"
"Haven't I?" he interrupts her, his pupils widening. "I could have sucked you dry in the middle of your bar, in front of everyone to see, each and every night. I could have eaten you months ago. I could have let you die on that street. I—"
She sees his teeth growing past his lips in his fervor. The passion is ripped out of him. She's never seen this before. Not from anything already dead.
"Show me more," she says, her legs trembling. She reaches up and holds the sides of his face, and it's the first time she's ever felt his skin under her own, the paled tan, the faint freckles, the wisps of his hair.
His hands curve around her waist, and their lower halves align. He presses into her, and she loses her breath, her fingers clenching the flesh of his cheeks. He is cold, but his cheeks are flushed with black, old blood, and his eyes are dilated and his teeth grow, and he is panting like he needs all the air in his lungs to remain undead.
"Oh, Tifa, please," he says, and his hands are iron, rocking her against him. "Let me."
His forehead presses into hers, and he kisses her. It is fervent and vicious, their teeth clacking. His fangs don't allow for the kiss to deepen any further than a few flicks of their tongues, and he inches back for a moment.
"Sorry, I…" he says, his teeth slowly pulled back into his skull. "They…I…I promise I won't drink from you."
His words surprise her. She reaches down to touch his lips, her fingertips finding the point of his now shortened fang.
As her hands peruse his face, the look in his eyes seal her doubts. Genuine. Sincere.
Her entire body throbs with the force of him. Every single night she's pushed him away, tried not to think about him, tried not to wonder. Whenever he'd invade her dreams and she'd wake up in a pool of sweat, trembling and wanting and wishing she didn't.
"Okay," she breathes, and she pulls him forward to kiss him again. This time, he explores her mouth, taking her in. He says he won't drink her, but he does. He drinks her in, filling himself up with her with how his hands roam and press and squeeze. They buck and rock into each other, and Tifa moans as she curls her legs around his waist. "Oh, Cloud."
He hisses at his name in her mouth. He bucks and she nearly cries.
He lifts her up eventually, his strength inhuman as he blindly makes his way to her bedroom on the second story. He tears her clothes apart, left with only her underwear still attached, and she gasps at her sudden nakedness. He leans away to stare at her, and she sees his teeth fall over his lips. He pinches his eyes closed, and he forces this teeth back.
"Sorry," he says again. "I'm…this is…"
She shakes her head, reaching up to touch his chest. She feels no heartbeat or evidence of life, but it is there, shadowed over his skin like the gleam of the light from the plates covering Midgar.
"Cloud…" she tries.
"I've just…wanted you so long." He opens his eyes once his teeth are back in place, but his eyes are nearly all black.
The words are a stab in her stomach. As she stares at him—a devil, a stalker, a monster with black eyes filled with amber and blue, the longing she had always felt underneath his shadowed stare, the way he never touched her.
Does she know him? She must. Not just from this lifetime, but from another. Connected somehow, even if it is a mere construct from him feeding her his blood, his own undead life to sustain her own.
She peels off her bra and reaches up to grab his hand, pressing it against her breast. "Touch me," she tells him. "Show me how long you've wanted me."
He wastes no time coming forward and kissing her—her lips and her jaw, pausing with a decadent slowness over her neck and her pulse point, and she can almost sense how ferociously he wants it—her blood and her life. He sucks her neck so hard, she feels the bruising occur before he trails further down, to her breasts and her stomach, gently pulling at her but not using his teeth. She pulls off his shirt, and he tears his pants away, falling somewhere off the bed. She feels his fangs occasionally poke against her, and he has to lean up and close his eyes, hands gripping the comforters surrounding them. His brows pinch in concentration as he pulls them back repeatedly.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, and it is such a refrain, over and over. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
She reaches up to hold his face, forcing him to look at her. She shakes her head.
"No, Cloud, it's okay." Trembling, she turns her head to bare her neck. "I'm…you can do what you need. Just…don't…"
"I'd never change you, Tifa," he tells her, shaking his head. "I'd never…"
She reaches down his abdomen until she finds his arousal, tugging him closer. "Do what you need," she reaffirms. "This is what I want."
His breath hits her face—tremulous and cool, and he nudges her legs wider. He lets his fingers glide over her first, delving into her wetness. She keens at the contact, her eyes fluttering closed. Her lungs expand and push, harsh into the still darkness of her room.
"Oh, gods," she whimpers.
He kisses her jaw and pushes into her, his fingers still on her, moving to her clit, pressing and rubbing, his body sliding in and out with a rhythmic pressure. It is the deepest tether, and she claws at his back, running her hands into his hair, fighting against the intangible pleasure. It's almost unreal, and she feels his teeth growing and growing into their kisses. There is an endless pain that scatters across his face, and Tifa can't breathe against his touch, blinded by the ecstasy created from the power behind his fingers and his strokes inside her body.
There is only one more thing. One more thing.
She rolls her head to the side. "Take from me," she rasps.
"Tifa…" he groans, his eyes pinched and uncertain. "You told me…"
"Please," she asserts. "It's the last thing."
It takes him a lifetime more—when they are so close, when Tifa wants to fly over the cliff, into the black, the unknown, when Cloud finally, gently breaks his teeth into the skin of her neck.
It is sharp pain, and in a moment it is gone. It feeds him, and it lightens her. It is as if the burden of her life completes the emptiness of his own.
She comes as her vision swims, and he releases once she arrives, his hands clenching and tearing the sheets of her bed.
Her blood splashes down her chest, and he lies beside her. His fangs are stained a rosy pink, his lips painted dark burgundy.
He is a devil with her life smeared across his face. Her sight doubles, and she smiles. Her hands find his body, his chest and his stomach riddled with so many scars from lifetimes. Lifetimes, she thinks.
How many lifetimes has he seen? How many years has he waited for her?
"Too many," he answers her, and she stares at him, unaware she had spoken. Her mind is a scrambled blur, because she can see all the lifetimes flash across her eyes, displayed against the false moonlight like film reels. Him saving her. Her saving him. Her dying. Her leaving him. His promises. Promises.
So many promises.
"It's always been you and I," he says. "You die, and I wait for the world to repeat."
"Cloud, you should have told me," she says, though she already knows she never would have believed him. "You shouldn't wait for me."
"I'd never give you the curse, Tifa." He reaches out, his palm caressing her face. "I will never give you the curse of immortality. I will never make you a monster like me."
A tear climbs down her cheek. She shakes her head.
"We can be together," she whispers.
"We are," he answers.
She claws at his chest, bringing him closer.
"It isn't a curse if forever is with you," she says. "You're not a monster."
"Tifa—"
His hesitation has her wrapping her body around him. Even with the heightened emotions, she feels the fog of sleep grasping at her mind.
"Stay with me," she says. "Stay."
She closes her eyes, and Cloud stays.
Cloud stays, watching her sleep. He stays until the daylight hours break. He only leaves before she wakes.
When she does, she realizes this lifetime is different. Her vision has changed, sparked by the dried blood on her neck and the ache in her heart.
She will no longer die.
He will no longer wait.
She will change it.