AN: Prompt for May 5 is "Favorite Quote." Cloud remembers some of Tifa's most powerful words.
Cloud watches her dance, splashing around like a jubilant child. She's so comfortable in the water, and he finds it no wonder dolphins are her favorite animal. Her giggles drift on the air, surrounding him in a warm embrace despite the chill in the air. Tifa had wanted to come out to their private beach at night. This morning over breakfast she had said,
"The stars glitter so beautifully on the water."
He looks out at her, those tiny lights shimmering around her both above and below. Tifa isn't splashing and laughing so much now. Instead, she's staring at him with a tranquil smile, holding herself around her middle. Cloud's mouth curves up and he wades toward her slowly as something she'd said a long time ago echoes in his mind.
"Do you think the stars can hear us?"
Cloud believes, as he skims his hand up her arm and kisses her forehead, that the stars have to be alive. And if they're alive, they have to be able to hear them. They twinkle and prance in the sky as if they are putting on a show for the whole world. They come back every night to give a new performance because they hear the people cheering, and the show is free for just about anyone. He recalls the time he spent under the plate, unable to see the sky. As he holds her under its vastness, that time feels so far away.
"Do you think they can see how hard we're fighting for them?"
That night, they had both been so afraid - nearly everything they had loved had been taken from them and death was around the corner. They had been dancing around one another, always on the edge of saying or doing something that would tilt the balance in their relationship, that would change it forever. But always too afraid. For him, he knew he was terrified of losing her too - after everything that had happened and was about to happen, he couldn't stand the thought of opening his heart up like that. It hurt him enough when his friends died. But Tifa… she meant so much to him, she was his world, that if he had taken that step and then lost her forever… Cloud was sure he would absolutely break with no hope for recovery.
But, he realized that night (maybe he had always known, but that night he understood) just how scared she was as well. He realized how badly she wanted to fight, how much she needed to fight in order to move forward, and that night… that night, she needed to open up to him too. It was like a hurdle they both had to get over before they could fully commit themselves to that final battle. It was the last hang up they had. He had been almost as afraid of her words as he was of Sephiroth - but when she told him there were other ways to express himself to her, to let her know how he was feeling, to confess, he made sure she knew everything he had been keeping inside. Of course, she already knew, on some level, the way he felt about her. How he thought about her - their time together in the Lifestream showed her that. And her heart had called out to him as well… but to feel it with one another so intimately, so physically, so wholly… that's what they needed in order to truly go on.
His lips lay claim to every inch of her face and she hums gleefully at his affection. Cloud holds her close; he can feel her heart thumping through her back against his palm. As he finds her mouth, as her arms wrap around his neck, as he pulls her so close she molds into his every curve, he thinks that he would gladly do it all over. He would fight and fight and fight - he'd fight for the stars and even fight them - if it meant he could experience these moments with her again and again and again.