A/N: An entry I wrote for the Cloti Fall Festival 2019 hosted by clotiweek on tumblr. Day 4 Prompt: Starlit Nights/"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy :) Comments and reviews are very much appreciated, thanks!

Something stirred him awake and Cloud opened his eyes to darkness. The wooden, creaking ceiling; the lamp on the bedside table; the drawn curtains moving from a draft in the window. Moonlight shone through it, enough to light the entire room dimly for Cloud to adjust his eyesight. He blinked away the sleep and realized the bed to his left was empty.

Cloud sat up and looked around. Tifa's belongings were still there, but the person herself was missing. Her bed was still in a state of disarray. There was no sound coming from the bathroom. Did she go out?

Groggily, Cloud went over to the window, drawing the curtain to the side. The window was slightly open, and he moved to close it, but a movement somewhere above him made him pause. Tifa was walking idly at the top of the water tower.

They had been in Nibelheim since yesterday. It had felt like a good opportunity to visit with no looming darkness hanging overhead. Tifa had been the one who had proposed the idea to him one night as they sat on the porch of her bar. The Shinra employees were gone and some of the survivors that had managed to escape the fire and Hojo's experiments had gone back to live there, revitalizing the town. They had heard that the people had made a proper burial ground for those who had lost their lives in the fire, and Tifa had said that she wanted to pay proper respects to her father.

They had arrived yesterday afternoon and found the town livelier than it had been two years ago under Shinra occupation. It hadn't been as lively as it had been before the fire, but it was as lively as could be. People had been up and about. The stores were busy. Children were playing around with balls or jumping ropes or hide-and-seek. Some of the women were chatting and laughing together. The men were carrying bricks or wooden planks for some other building needed reconstructing. A monument had been erected just outside the town in memoriam of the Nibelheim incident seven years ago.

Among the survivors, there were some they knew, some they didn't. Most remembered Tifa, and Tifa had greeted them with wide smiles and tears. Some remembered Cloud and somehow, they had learned that he was the one who had put a stop to things two years back. Cloud hadn't been sure how to react to that.

They had gone to the cemetery right after. Tifa found her father's grave and, after some looking around, Cloud found his mother's. And time seemed to stop. For a moment, he forgot where he was and what had happened and he was back in his house seven years ago, eating the food his mother made, talking with her about the job he had landed on in Midgar, and resting on his bed as he listened to his mother asking if he'd met a girl.

The tears started falling before he knew it. Cloud tried to blink them away, but they wouldn't stop—a slow, steady stream down his face. He felt his throat closing up—a crushing feeling in his chest that was suffocating him.

How could he have forgotten? How could he have let himself forget?

He had been there. He had seen his house on fire. He had seen his mother's body burning. And he had been too late.

The last image he had of his mother was of a strained smile just as he had been about to head back to his team. Cloud remembered wondering if it had anything to do with his choice to leave the town. But he never did get to know what had made her look so sad, because she had forced that smile and said, "Be careful," without giving him any chance to say anything.

Cloud stared at his mother's name, half-hoping that by doing so would somehow resurrect her from death. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice breaking through the tears.

~ O ~

After putting on his boots, Cloud went outside and headed for the water tower. They had spent the day helping the townspeople after visiting the graveyard again. It had been a tiring day, but the effort they put on rebuilding the town was worth it. That was why when they went back to their rented room at the inn, Cloud was immediately asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. So, it had surprised him when he woke up to find night had already fallen and Tifa gone from the room.

Cloud curled his fingers around the ladder on the side of the water tower. How many years had it been since he last went up these steps? The rung felt smaller in his hand now.

He looked up. Tifa had sat down with her legs dangling down the edge of the landing. She had her back to him, so she hadn't seen him yet. The rustle of his clothes and his almost-silent steps up the ladder seemed to alert Tifa of his presence, because just as he was reaching the landing, he found her looking his way, and her eyes went wide at the sight of him.

"Cloud?" she exclaimed, then shut her mouth self-consciously as her eyes darted this way and that. It was already late, and people were probably already asleep. "What are you doing here?" she asked in a hushed tone. "Weren't you asleep?"

"I woke up and you weren't there," Cloud replied just as softly, bringing his feet down on the landing with a soft thud. Cool wind brushed past him and the air felt a tad chillier than it was down below. Cloud realized, then, that he was quite high, with no buildings whatsoever to block the wind. With mountains to one side and a vast plain to the other, the houses of Nibelheim lay quiet in the night.

He walked over and took his seat beside her, his legs dangling down over the edge. "I got worried."

Tifa smiled. "It's a small town. Nothing's going to happen."

"That's not what happened seven years ago," he said, his voice so quiet it was almost impossible to hear. But the air that night was silent, not even the sound of crickets could be heard, and Tifa heard it as loud as if Cloud had said it right to her ear.

It was a low blow, and he knew their circumstances were different now. Sephiroth was gone. The reactors weren't working anymore. He doubted an incident like that would ever occur again. But still, there was an unease in his heart as he watched the town sleep that night. He half-expected someone to come barging out of a house carrying a burning torch, setting the whole town on fire. A maniacal laugh and the glint of a long, thin sword. Hysterical screams and dying wails. But the night stayed quiet with not much of an owl hooting or a wolf howling.

Both of them grew quiet, lost in their own thoughts. As Tifa looked to the sky, Cloud found his attention drawn to a certain house across the tower. His old house, where his mother had waited for him to come home. She had smiled at him when he told her he was leaving for Midgar. She had wished him luck. But, could it be that she had wanted him to stay?

What if he hadn't left town? Would it have made any difference? He wouldn't have had to be away from her. He would have been able to get his mother out on time.

The thought made him pause.

Would it, though? Yes, he had received trainings as an infantryman, but even with those trainings, he had failed to save his mother. What would have happened if he had stayed without receiving any sort of training whatsoever? Cloud scoffed at himself. He might have lost not only his mother, but Tifa too. He might have lost his own life.

"Doesn't this take you back?" Tifa's soft voice suddenly broke through his reverie.

Cloud glanced at her. She was leaning back and looking up at the sky. Her eyes had a faraway look, with a small, wistful smile grazing her lips.

He followed her gaze only to have his breath taken away by the vast open sky. In the clear and cloudless night, with neither building nor man-made light to obstruct the view, Cloud could see a myriad of stars in the sky—white ones and blues ones and even some bordering on red. Some shone so bright that it made him think it was close enough for him to reach up and grab it.

Maybe he could. Maybe if he reached up just a bit more, the star would be in his hand, and then the sky would open up and swallow him, taking him to where his mother was.

Cloud fisted his hand in the empty air and brought it back down to his lap.

"The stars were also so bright that night," Tifa added.

They were. He remembered it. The bold announcement he had made. The promise he had to keep.

"Do you ever wish you could turn back time?" Cloud asked.

Tifa glanced at him, but he didn't dare meet her stare. He was afraid that she would be able to tell what he was thinking. These self-deprecating thoughts that had constantly consumed him ever since they stepped foot in Nibelheim. Helping the townspeople was the only thing that could stop this train of thoughts.

Tifa didn't answer immediately. Gradually, she looked away, back at the stars. The silence stretched on, and Cloud wondered if she would ever say anything, when she suddenly, quietly, murmured, "Sometimes. Sometimes I'd find myself looking at the sky and wish I could go back there and stop my father from going after him." She paused, then chuckled under her breath. "Sometimes I wish I could've stopped Sephiroth somehow."

Cloud glanced at her. "How would you have stopped him?"

Tifa shrugged. "I don't know. Lock down the manor, for one."

At that, Cloud smiled. Then he leaned back and propped himself on his hands, throwing his head back to drink in the vastness of the heavens.

"Do you think he's happy right now?" he asked again. "Your father."

It took a moment before Tifa replied, "He's happy."

"How do you know?"

"A feeling," she said, "as a daughter." Then, she looked at him and added, "Your mother's happy too."

"What—?"

Cloud stared at her, stunned. He hadn't said one word about his mother, and there Tifa went and broached the topic he had been afraid to come near. The smile on her face was kind and knowing.

"Did you know, Cloud?" she said, looking up at the stars again, hugging her knee. "Back then, you were the person I most longed to see. I had lost my home, my father, my friends. I had lost everyone. And then I thought of you and the promise we made." Tifa paused. "Even though I didn't know it at the time, but you came for me, didn't you? You came for me at my time of need, like you said you would. And just like how you came to my rescue, you also came to your mother. Right?"

Her words struck a deep chord inside him that Cloud was rendered speechless.

His gaze shifted to the quiet house across the tower—the house where he grew up in.

The painful image of it burning had been engraved into his mind so deep that Cloud wasn't surprised he had kept the memory locked away, hidden even from himself. He had tried to break into his house—tried to take his mother out—but the gas had exploded and the force had thrown him aside. The hopelessness and powerlessness he had felt then had spurred him to run after Sephiroth into the reactor in the mountain.

A particularly warm breeze brushed against his skin, and for a moment, it was as if his mother was there, holding his hand and smiling at him.

Cloud looked up, but the image was gone, and the breeze had blown away, and in its place were the millions of stars filling his eyesight.

Tears burned his eyes and Cloud tried to blink them away.

"You came for her," she said again, enveloping his hand in hers. "That's all that matters."

Cloud met her gaze and when she smiled at him, Cloud was reminded that it was the same for her. That there was a deep-seated sadness in her heart much like his own that had only begun to heal.

That's all that matters.

There had been this restlessness inside him that he couldn't quite explain. He didn't know when it started. But what he knew for certain was that, when he stood before his mother's grave the day before, all the pent-up feelings he didn't realize he had held came pouring out, and in its wake was a state of peaceful emptiness, that was slowly refilled as he helped the townspeople throughout the day. It was something he had forgotten—a contentment and fulfillment he hadn't felt since the day he left his home.

Cloud looked at the starlit night and wondered if his mother was there, watching over him.

~ END ~