Trapdoor (Part 21)

by anza (16.12.05)

Tifa.

He remembered the first time he met her. It wasn't anything like meeting Vincent, who shot him a look and hooked him in as easily as a baited fish. She had cast him a second look, but it hadn't been more than to memorize his face and name; she had to do that, especially when her customers were predominantly disgrunted Shin-Ra Company employees after a long day.

She, under the dim lamps, her hair ruffling softly every time the door opened. Dressed all in black, she swayed to the band playing something calm and rough, a soldier's song. All evening, Cloud watched her out of the corner of his eye, careful not to make full contact, but careful to make her see he was looking at her.

In a way he didn't think was possible, she instantly understood.

At first he thought he was being delusional. His social skills were flawed, and he was Vincent's to keep for a long, long time. Two weeks after his first meeting with them, Tifa closed down the bar for a few hours, invited her drummer friend Cid, and all four of them jammed. Cloud went insane on the lyrics, improvising them as he went - words, tearing out of his throat, tearing out his throat, his whole world pinpoint bright and psychedelic color. Satisfied was really the way to describe it, after that first time. Back then, he used the world to describe it in the coarse, brusque, physical way.

Nine months later, they were gone. The boys had come into Cloud's life, and he had to take care of the littlest one. Once he brought Kadaj with him, and felt increasingly startled every time he looked over in his direction and found those green eyes staring at him without flinching, without looking away at all. The owner of the bar died and Tifa took over; Cid got promoted to the head of his research facility; Vincent disappeared one night without a trace, without a note. Cloud entered a depression his brothers forcefully pulled him out of. He wasn't allowed to give up anymore.

But Tifa, her brown eyes shining with promise and hope, she was something Cloud wanted. He didn't mean it in the same way he would have meant it back then - like an object, or a thing. He meant it now as he would give what heart he could spare for her, he would take care of her, he would hold her hand and let her hold his. Maybe sometimes they would hold each other close in the night when the world became too much. Maybe someday he would slip that ring on her finger and tell her he wanted her, forever and ever.

He didn't want kids. He just wanted his brothers. But maybe Tifa could convince him otherwise of that too.

It wasn't riding into the sunset. He wasn't a knight. He wasn't perfect like that. He had his own problems, his own timidity, his own social awkwardness. Over the years he knew how to react to little things, and understood as long as he didn't put a toe out of line nothing really bad would happen to him that he wouldn't see a mile off. Cloud knew life was about predicting - predicting things between the beginning and the end. Smoothing the bumps in an otherwise horizontal line. Untying the knots in the red string of his life.

He thought Tifa would be part of his life forever since he met her, but now he knew better than to believe in forever.

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It never failed to surprise him how it didn't matter which company he was in, the meetings were all equally boring.

Cloud got the distinct feeling that even if Zack was the one presenting, dressed in a gorilla suit and attempting Wutaian with a Costa Del Sol accent, he wouldn't would be any more amused with the content of the papers in front of him. Of course, it would be rather amusing if it really happened. The most amazing part of the meeting so far was that Kadaj had not ceased to take notes on everything being said. The oldest brother had checked, and apparently the silver-haired teen was really taking notes. He would have to ask later if this was a result of having too many boring teachers and, consequentially, failing a lot of tests, leading to equally large amounts of ass-kissing. Certainly, he didn't remember his high school teachers being half as boring as hearing the differences between two centimeter difference between the side seams on the Cameo girls' line. Who cares?, he barely held back, they're all anorexic and they'll all squeeze themselves into SOLDIER pants regardless of their size or our seams.

"Rowe?" Zack's voice pierced into his thoughts.

But Cloud was already getting up, moving to the head of the table. With a short, almost angry snap, he clicked open his presentation. Whisking through a graph, he explained since the sales had been declining for the Feline line under the girls' sector for the last seven-and-a-half months, there had actually been an overall effect on dieting pills and gym attendance. "Perhaps this is just conjecture, but SOLDIER pants have far, far more effect on the general population than people can think of," he explained, and then clicked to the next slide.

This was what Sales did - surveys. He showed a slew of comments on how wonderful SOLDIER jeans were from both male and female buyers. Underlying all of them was the sense that people had to conform to the size of jeans. "By far we are the most affordable jeans on the Continent. The charts don't say that because there are too many competitors on the Continent," he clicked to the next slide to show what he meant, "but that's looking in the wrong place. What you need to look at is this," he showed another chart that showed the amount of jeans being smuggled into Wutai by brand, in which SOLDIER jeans soared over the rest of the companies. "This is a sign of two things - one, that we're not tight enough on our factories, and two, that despite our decline, our popularity has spread beyond everything this company can think of."

"How do you propose to use this popularity?" Zack and everyone else's eyes were on him.

Cloud felt self-conscious for only a moment, and then launched into speech. "We need to branch out into other areas," he said in one breath, and felt the murmurs start.

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It was Christmas.

Kadaj slept with his back to Cloud. Despite Cloud's continued attempts to get him to sleep in the other bed, it remained as it had the first morning after Kadaj had remade it, quilts tucked in neatly under the pillow. Early-on Kadaj had stolen Cloud's pillow - he didn't mind, he didn't need it. The bed was comfortably warm, their backs barely touching. Zack had bid them goodnight like a parent or an older brother rather than Cloud's superior, and for the first time upon meeting him, Cloud felt relaxed. He wasn't supposed to, he knew, and he knew there was something about Zack that hit warning bells everywhere...

...but Zack, in that moment, had looked at him with his eyes full of warmth and no guile at all, and Cloud had startled, and then smiled back. His face and his mood had lifted before his instincts could catch them. Oddly, he felt as if he had done this somewhere before...

It was the first Christmas without Yazoo and Loz since they came. It didn't even snow in Midgar. Here in Nibelheim, snowflakes had started whirling two months ago. All the same, they'd put up the tree, hung up ornaments: a relic cork snowman Kadaj had made when he was five and he'd hung on his backpack the day he arrived on Cloud's doorstep; five gold beaten designs from National Parks; a dog he'd bought at an after-Christmas sale last year; Yazoo's gift to their little family two years ago, a tiny picture frame with Cloud, Loz and Kadaj half-hidden in the smoke issuing from their newly blown-up stove; memories, falling through his mind like the crystal drops of tears, each one impacting upon the pavement with a soft, unconscious stab through his heart.

Behind him, Kadaj shifted, curled into a ball, and Cloud wished needlessly that he was alone. Not because he felt he needed to keep walls up when his youngest brother was around - he did, after all, have to be strong - but because he found the comfort in feeling sad so aching in his soul he was sure that even if he was alone, he would be holding it in. The hysteria in his situation and in the back of his throat was still building; it would take only a little more to send him into a fit of rage or tears, which ever struck his fancy when it hit.

My brothers. He held them all close to his heart, furiously as the tears that pricked the back of his eyes but he refused to let loose, afraid if he let them out, they would somehow tear the precarious future laid out in front of him. There was nothing for him in Midgar now except for his vow to get Yazoo and Loz out. He would get Kadaj somewhere safe, and then...

No. He had to think of now. He had to get Kadaj to safety now, regardless of Yazoo and Loz. They would understand. Above all, the youngest and the most naive had to survive. He closed his eyes, certain of this above all the confusion of the past few days.

I have to be strong, he thought, and drifted off to sleep.