iv.

Tifa opened her eyes, the chill creeping into her chest, pumping out to her arms and legs. She broke away from Cloud, still inside her cell, fingers digging into the flesh of his back. Their faces were only a few inches apart, but as she looked at him, she felt the gnawing need to keep kissing him and not let him go. If she did, he might smell like smoke and start to burn, just like everyone else.

His eyes were still glowing, still a deep cerulean, and it would have been such a pretty color had it not signified what he had done to himself. How long would he survive? Were the mutations enough to sustain him, or was there a limit to how much mako he could handle?

Though his eyes remained something close to death, the emotion held inside them was not.

Pupils dilated and breathing ragged, Cloud didn't give off any intention of letting her go either. His thumbs pressed into her, making her legs squeeze his sides. She grasped the sides of his face, pressing hard for another kiss.

He had picked her up sometime between when they started and now, sitting on the edge of her bed, with her twined around his waist and sitting in his lap. He shifted, facing the mattress, and gently falling backward and pressing her into the springs. She sighed into his mouth, and he let out a growl. His fingers touched the skin on her stomach, curling under her prison shirt. It made her sigh again.

His hands scrambled further up her shirt, scraping blunt nails across her ribs. Her mind went numb from the feeling.

"Tifa…" he said, voice gruff. "You can't...let me.." His voice was straining, as if he could hardly speak through the mako.

"Cloud…" she trailed, kissing his neck.

"You can't..." he growled. "I won't be able to stop."

Oh, but she didn't want him to stop. The emotions were too high. She hadn't seen him in so long...subconsciously, she thought he'd died. Everyone was gone.

And now, suddenly, so suddenly, everyone wasn't. He was with her. He was home.

"I don't want you to."

His words were strangled. "No...no, you don't. You don't understand. You don't—"

"I remember."

He opened his eyes and stared at her, his arms becoming a little shaky.

"What?"

"I remember you."

He forced himself to sit up, eyes still glowing, but he seemed to be trying to control it, rubbing his face roughly with his hands.

"What do you remember?"

"Everything," she answered breathy, missing his warmth. She sat up, her knee touching his leg.

He blinked at the ground, scratching his eyes.

"Good...that's good."

She looked at him. "You lied."

"What?"

"About being friends. We were friends."

He smiled humorlessly. "No, we weren't."

"But we..." she stuttered. "You showed me the mountain. I kissed you."

"Tifa, it didn't..." he said, struggling. "You loved everyone, even if they didn't deserve it."

"Are you saying you didn't deserve it?"

"A lot of people didn't deserve it. Your friends didn't—"

"You were jealous of them because they were my friends."

"And I wanted to be your friend?"

She stilled. "No...you didn't."

He was silent as he stared at the ground, jaw muscles jutting on the side of his face.

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

He breathed a laugh. "Your parents wouldn't let me near you. Your friends wouldn't either, until you put your foot down. And if I ever got close to you," he said, voice lowering to a whisper. "If I ever got close to you, what do you think would happen?"

She thumbed at her pants, finding a loose thread. "We wouldn't be able to be together."

"There were so many prospects for you, Tifa. I wasn't social, I was confused and didn't know what I wanted, and I wasn't any match for most of the guys in Nibelheim."

She glanced at his arm.

"So you became a SOLDIER to prove that you could be good enough?"

She couldn't keep the incredulous tremor out of her voice.

He looked at her, hearing her voice. He almost seemed apologetic. "You don't know what it felt like, having you come up and talk to me, to spend time with me just because you wanted to. We were graduating soon, and suddenly you were just...there."

"I was always there," she said, as quietly as he, scooting closer. "But it's okay now. You became…what you wanted to become. You survived. I survived. And somehow, you found me."

"Yeah..." he said. He grabbed her waist tentatively and kept her close. "Yeah."

Tifa wrapped her arms around him, breathing out deeply.

"I didn't believe it at first, when they started trying to identify you."

"Someone caught me stealing?"

"They wouldn't see you, not all of you," he said. "Just your hair or your eyes. Never all of your face. Then King Kisaragi sent us that letter, and I knew I had to find you first."

"Why? So you could save me?"

He smiled then, slightly and sheepishly. "Yes. To protect you. I always hoped you were right, about there being more to the Lifestream. I hoped it didn't suck your soul away, and it didn't. Some of your memory, but not much more. It even helped you survive."

She touched his chest.

"What about you, Cloud?"

"I'll be fine."

"No, you're not," she said forcefully. "What if something awful happens? What if the mutation isn't enough? What if—"

"Don't worry about it," he interrupted.

But she would, and she knew he knew it. So she raised her head and kissed him, like before, with all of the warmth she felt for him. For that mysterious, cold, mean, guarded, confused, thoughtful boy. For the man he wanted to become. And who he was, now—who was he?

Someone who loved her, whoever she was, she thought, as he kissed her back.

When she woke up, he had left without any trace of himself except for the scent of him lingering on her skin. She inhaled her pillow and smelled him there, too. It was nice, feeling him so close, having comfort from him though he was gone.

He left the barred door unlocked again, as he said he would.

Leave in the morning, he said. The guards change shift at 7 am. There's a five minute window for you to sneak through the hallways. I'll leave the back door open. And once you get out—

Find Yuffie and run, she thought. Straightforward and simple. Tell her Godo had sent scouts to look for her, and it wouldn't be long until they were found. Their only option would be to run unless Yuffie was persuaded to go back home, but Tifa wasn't sure. Would Yuffie ever allow it?

She held her breath the entire way out of the jail. She skittered through alleyways and backroads, stomach on edge, the chill of getting caught lingering in the back of her mind. She made her way to the safehouse, praying fervently that Yuffie would be coiled up in the bed, safe and uncaring that Tifa had left her.

"Yuffie," Tifa cried, her voice strangled when the ninja star landed, imbedded in the brick beside her head. She jerked, her knees nearly giving way from relief.

"Tifa!" Yuffie exclaimed, stepping out from her hiding spot in the shadowed corner of the room. She ran at her, bowling them both into the wall.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Tifa spluttered, hugging Yuffie with all her might. She realized she was shaking.

"You're an idiot, and I hate you," Yuffie said back, breathless. "I tried surveillance, I tried to figure out the best way to get to you and… How dare you get caught like that."

"Oh, Yuffie. I know," she said, almost laughing. "But I'm here, now."

Yuffie shook her head. "How did you escape?"

Their grip on each other loosened, and Tifa took a step back, holding Yuffie's shoulders.

"A friend helped me."

"A friend?" Yuffie asked, bewildered. "Tifa, we don't have any friends."

"I didn't think we did. He was…from my past, a long time ago."

Yuffie only raised a curious brow. "Your past? Okay, spill."

Even after everything, Tifa found every pore of her body hesitating.

"There isn't anything to—"

"You didn't put me through three weeks of constant worry for nothing, Tifa. It's time you fess up."

Tifa took a deep breath. She glanced at the far wall of the room. It was a stuffy and small place, reminiscent of her jail cell with a small cot stuffed in the corner, a metal dresser, dismantled pieces of chairs and a beaten up furnace. The one window to their right was a rectangle with two panels of glass, grimy and splattered with smog and dust.

"Okay…okay," she said softly. She gestured to the cot. "Let's sit. I'll tell you everything I remember."

Tifa told her. She told her about Cloud and her friendships, how she desperately wanted to be close to him, and how he would push her away. She told her about kissing him on the mountain, in the view of the small pond of mako, like the palm of earth holding the remnants of its life that escaped from beneath the surface. She told her about how Shinra stormed into the town, wanting to capitalize on the newly found pocket of free flowing Lifestream. The rage that ensued between the village and the Shinra troops, who began forcing families out of their homes. It wasn't safe to be so near the Lifestream in such concentrations, they had said. Who knew how long it had surfaced? Who knew how contaminated the village already was?

Tifa still wasn't sure how the fire started. Either it was started between civilians and the troopers, or instigated by the troopers to enforce cooperation. In the end, she and Cloud fought against the men who found them on their rock, and Tifa slipped and fell into the pool of the Lifestream below. She remembered Cloud's scream. It was a torturous thing, and something Tifa wished she didn't have to remember.

She fought the tide of it. It was thick and viscous, pulling her under the more she fought against it. Then she felt hands on her arms, and she was losing consciousness, sucking in mouthfuls of the earth, gasping, suffocating, dying—and then...

She woke up to nothing. Ash and smoke clouded the sky. She didn't know who she was or where she'd been. She was afraid of the men in the burning village, as they hauled her into a van and sent her to a lab in Midgar. They asked her questions, took her through tests. She escaped because of her fear, because of how they looked at her. Survival had burned within her, and she learned, eventually, it was from the mako. She lived with flashes of memory but little else. She found herself crying occasionally, at rushes of emotion that would fill her or distant visions of her parents that would come upon her without warning. Eventually, those faded, too.

Yuffe looked ponderous and devastated. "Oh, Tifa. I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "No, please. Don't be. I'm here, now. It all...worked out, in the end."

They were quiet for a while, and Tifa tried to suppress the irksome vulnerability. It was different, now. A different heaviness, with the memories fresh, like coats of paint on the inside of her skull still trying to dry.

"So..." Yuffie began after a few minutes. "Cloud...he loved you. He loved you and he thought you died, so he became…"

Tifa nodded.

Yuffie crossed her arms. "He definitely could have done a better job when he was a kid."

Tifa laughs a little. "Yuffie, please."

"I'm serious!"

"Speaking of love, Godo—"

"Does not," Yuffie interrupted, cutting her arms through the air. "Don't even start. I don't care if he's trying to find me. I don't."

"He does."

"He doesn't!"

"He's your father."

"And he needs to learn that he will never be able to control me," Yuffie finished. "Let them follow me. They won't kill me. There's nothing they can do except try to catch me."

Tifa swallowed. She's not sure if she could voice the next thing on her mind. "Yuffie…"

"Honestly, Tifa. I know what I'm doing. Godo can go to hell. He doesn't know—"

Something in Tifa's face must give her away. Yuffie stopped her ranting, inhaling a sharp intake of breath. "Oh. Tifa. No. There is no way he would do that to you. To us."

"He already threatened it, Yuffie. If they catch me again, they'll use me to get to you."

Yuffie's eyes glinted like steel. "If they think they can come in here and take you without a fight, they have got another thing coming."

Tifa smiled sadly. She shook her head. "It isn't that simple, Yuffie. I can't protect you. I thought I could, but they found me so easily. They captured me so easily. I don't think we're strong enough to outrun them."

Yuffie scoffed loudly, anger written all over her face. "Tifa! Are you even hearing yourself? What did they do to you in there to make you think that? What happened to us against the world? What happened to not giving a fuck about authority and consequences? What happened?"

Tifa stared at Yuffie, her heart filling up with love and with uncertainty. With the buffer of mako gone, the feeling of invincibility was waning. She could now see how scary it all was—any wrong move, any reckless misstep like the one she had made could mean the end of both of them. The end of Yuffie and her freedom, and the end of Tifa and her life.

"It made me realize how much you mean to me, Yuffie," she stated, her throat tight. "I can't lose you."

She reached into her pocket, the offending gift lazily resting on the joints of her fingers.

"It was a stupid birthday gift," Tifa said. "Cloud caught me stealing this from an outside vendor. That's how this all started. Because I cared about you."

Yuffie blinked, looking at the bracelet. She reached out and gently took it from Tifa's grasp, bringing it to her face for inspection.

"Tifa…" she said, quietly, uncharacteristically soft. "This was the one I wanted."

"I know."

"Tifa," she whined, and Tifa realized she didn't know what else to say.

"You knew better!" Yuffie finally shouted. "This," she emphasized, shaking the bracelet. "This isn't worth shit. Why did you steal it?"

Tifa wanted to laugh, but she's closer to crying instead. "I don't know, Yuffie. I don't know."

Yuffie garbled a few other words, incoherently, before scooting toward Tifa and hugging her again. "I thought I was the idiot."

Tifa laughed into her neck. "Oh, Yuffie. What do we do, now?"

She made a disgruntled noise. "I know what I should do. I should go home. Ugh! If I go home, this will all end, and you'd be saved," Yuffie said. She ran a hand through her short hair. "Ugh! Screw Godo. Screw him. I hate him. He only wants me back by my eighteenth birthday so I can be presented at the Coming-of-Age Ceremony. He wants me to be married and rule the kingdom. Screw him."

Tifa shook her head. "Then tell him that. Write him a letter. Tell him you won't come back unless you can rule how you want."

"Easier said than done, Tifa," Yuffie said, dramatically falling back onto the bed.

Tifa shrugged. "Why don't you try? He loves you. He might listen."

Yuffie laughed, braying and loud. "Yeah, sure. Maybe he'd listen if I threaten to commit suicide."

Frowning, Tifa sighed. "Just try. Then we'll see what happens."

There was a lengthy pause between them before Yuffie said, "You really think he'll comply, don't you?"

"If he's ready to kill me to get you back, then I think he'll do just about anything."

Yuffie stared at her, her mouth a grim line. It was a far cry from her usual spunk and her glittering eyes. Tifa hated to see her this way, but she also hated to see her living in the slums of Midgar, wallowing in rot and filth when she was royalty and deserved so much more. Tifa realized how selfish she had been, exploiting Yuffie's friendship because she was lost and lonely.

Yuffie finally wrote the letter, and Tifa was simultaneously proud and regretful, because this was not what Yuffie wanted, and it would never be what she truly wanted. Only when Yuffie received a letter back, with the Wutain stamp of royalty, did she tell Tifa.

"Good news!" she said, waving the letter. "You're coming."

Tifa choked. "What?"

Yuffie grinned. "You're coming. Just think! You, me, and a whole country in our grasp. Your record would be clean. You could do anything, Teef. And!" she said. "Bring your friend."

"Yuffie," Tifa breathed. "I don't...I don't know..."

Yuffie faltered. "What? What do you not know?"

Thousands of reasons assaulted Tifa's mind. I don't belong there. I've never belonged there. I don't think I could offer anything you wouldn't get elsewhere.

I don't know how to do anything but steal and lie and hurt people.

I've lost almost all of my power, and who am I supposed to be without it?

Tifa bit her tongue, unsure how to relay all of her uncertainties.

"I don't know...how I would be, there, after everything."

Yuffie only rolled her eyes, as if all of Tifa's doubts were silly and unwarranted. "Puh-lease. You're one of a kind and if you're not going...well, I would still go, but I would probably die of sadness and I'd miss you. A lot. Just...think about it. Okay?"

Tifa almost smiled, but her stomach roiled with anxiety. She sighed.

"Okay. Give me a few days."

She met Cloud on the outskirts of Sector Seven, near the train station. It was an unobtrusive place with too little places to have much surveillance or importance, the guard anemic and thin. He was not wearing his SOLDIER attire, instead donning the civilian issued clothing all Shinra employees were offered – plain cargo pants, boots, and a plain black shirt. He nearly looked harmless. He almost looked like a nineteen year old.

When he came up to her, her nerve endings felt as though they were fraying again. His power was hidden behind the curtain of his skin, and yet she could feel it like a punch.

"Hi," she greeted.

"Hi," he greeted back. "It's good to see you."

She smiled. "It's good to see you, too." She glanced around. There was no one in their immediate vicinity, but she spoke softly all the same. "I have news."

"What kind of news?" he asked, his voice mimicking hers.

"Yuffie has been in contact with her father. She...bargained with him. She'll go to Wutai if her father pardons all of my crimes."

Cloud's eye widen as he looks at her. "And he agreed?"

Tifa hesitated briefly, still uncertain how to feel. "Yes."

"Is it a trap?"

"I don't think so. But Yuffie...asked me to go with her. She's my family, and I want to be there for her."

Cloud nodded slowly. "When...when are you leaving?"

"The ship will leave on Monday, next week, at dawn."

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Cloud looked at her carefully.

"Wutai is...far," he said.

"Yes."

They stared at one another. Tifa braved the distance between them, touching his forearm with one of her hands. The tension in him began to diminish.

"Would you..." she started. She shook her head. "Would you think about coming, too? Leaving this place? Starting over with me?"

He glanced down at her palm resting on his arm. He relaxed them and took her hand into his. "Shinra doesn't allow SOLDIERs to quit."

Tifa swallowed. "I know. It would be a risk."

"I'm a weapon, now. I'm not even sure if I – " he paused, scoffing. "I'm not even sure I know who I am, anymore."

At that, Tifa smiled easily. "Me either. But we could figure it out together."

"I could hurt you."

She lifted up a shoulder in a shrug. It felt careless, reckless, even to her. "I could, too."

He was struggling. She could see it in the lines of his face and the tension of his brow.

"I never thought I would see you again."

The roughness behind his words pushed against her like a shove. The memories of him as a lost, cold, calm little boy resurfaced in her mind's eye.

"I won't force you to do this, Cloud. This is a big decision, and –"

"No," he interrupted. "I never thought I would see you again, and here you are." The hand gripping hers began to squeeze tighter. "I don't want to lose you again so soon."

She squeezed his hand back. "You don't have to."

"Would you still..." he trailed. He allowed the softest glow to surround him before erasing it, stuffing it back into his pores. "Even though I'm...would you still..."

She shook her head at his almost-question. "Oh, Cloud," she said, reaching up to touch his face. He tensed but relaxed immediately. "Of course I would."

He brought his hand up to press against her own. "I'll protect you, even if you don't need protecting. I'll go where you go."

The smile began to creep on her face. "It doesn't have to be Wutai forever. We could go anywhere. Cosmo Canyon. Costa del Sol –"

Cloud scoffed, but he started to smile, a barely there thing. Tifa cherished it.

"Doesn't matter to me," he said. "As long as you're there."

Tifa stood up on her tip toes and kissed him. Suddenly, the mako that blistered along her lips and swam into her mouth didn't feel like an impossible desperation. The scenes that ran behind her eyelids were pictures of a future. For once in her life, Tifa believed that the world was not only filled with awful feelings and awful creatures.

It was also filled with the challenge of crossing a rickety bridge, dangling over the mouth of fear, jaws wide and teeth jagged and beckoning. And at the end, there was the triumph of reaching the other side, brilliant and bold. There was time, whether brief or long, fleeting or endless.

Most of all, there was the bursting and blooming of possibility.