Chapter 8

~ One Hundred Minutes of Nightmare ~

It dug, and snarled and ripped at the centre of his stomach, burned through his eyes and down his spinal chord. He had no air to cry out with. He had no motivation to allow himself to be heard. The plain landscape suddenly vaulted into full view underneath his feet. The pain numbed out into the background.

He straightened his back and glanced over the surroundings. It was as if a giant hand had taken a huge brush of watery paint and sloshed it this way and that until it made a coherent mess of blues, greens and stark whites. Cloud wanted to turn down the brightness.

He began to run. The earth underneath his feet became extremely real. He felt the squelching of water trying to escape into his boots as he brought one foot in front of the other. When he looked down he saw the browny-reds he churned up under his heels and toes.

There was a looming gray in the distance. He suddenly called out a name, but he didn't understand the voice. He called out again and this time the distant gray twisted violently into a rocky mound of dirt, broken and lethal fallen down trees and dead vegetation hanging from its contours and rugged edges.

He turned around quickly. The watercolour landscape had vanished into a void of black. There was a sweet and sickly taste of something clinging to the inside of his throat. He ran on ahead.

He tore through the dying stench of rot and damp and wormy earth. His hands were bleeding from fighting against the sheering of rocks and knives of bark protruding from tree branches.

She lay there, at the top of a large ridge, just beyond his full view. She was lying over the only thing still alive in the barren landscape, a peaceful little stream of baby blue meandering its way down the mountainside; a flowing, endless, silky ribbon of water.

There were no longer any trees, any dirt, any earth, any rotting this, any stench of that, any nothing. There was just the cold and sharp feel of steely rock against his skin. He walked up to her motionless form.

"Tifa?"

She didn't stir. He bent down to pick her up, sliding his arms underneath her.

The ground caved and split underneath his feet. The non-existent sky turned a bloodcurdling red. He thought he had gone blind and tried to hold her to him more fervently, hoping to at least protect her. But his hands were slipping, she was slipping away, the earth was moving from underneath his feet.

He had failed.

The baby blue stream turned into a menacing black fountain of tar. His vision came and went in blinding flashes of light. She was beginning to wilt into the foreground, deteriorating into the ridge itself, turning a cold shade of gray, turning into the very stone on which she was lying. He felt himself swept away, drowning, clawing at the thick currents sucking him under.

"You're late..." a soft voice whispered in his ear.

He was thrown under.

"TIFA!"

***

She sat up with a fierce jolt. The clock beside her bed read two thirty in the morning. The room was clammy and cold and there was a slight draft seeping in through her windowpane.

That's when she heard the scream.

"Cloud?"

She had swiftly torn herself from her bed covers and cautiously opened the door to Cloud's room. He was lying on his bed, covering his face with his hands, breathing heavily in his chest. She looked across the landing to check the children hadn't got up and then closed the door behind her. She sat beside Cloud on the bed.

"Another nightmare?"

"Yeah."

He took his hands away from his face and she found to her relief that he simply looked stoic and not hysterical. But then he always looked that way when she came to check on him. She also knew not to ask what his dreams were about anymore. They both had their nightmares.

She began to lift herself up from his bed when he suddenly sat up.

"Stay here."

For a moment she thought someone else had spoken.

"What for?"

"Sleep here. I want to know you're safe."

His reply was strong and unwavering. He was looking straight ahead at the opposite wall with the same stoic expression on his face as when she'd found him. She had trouble removing her gaze as well as her puzzlement.

He turned towards her and nodded in his quiet yet overpowering way and she found herself moving under his covers, positioning herself onto her side. Her silk nightgown was still draped around her but she didn't think to remove it.

She felt him sink back into the bed next to her, a respectable distance being maintained between them even when he shifted a little closer to her back. She lay there a while, finding his presence both comforting and unnerving at the same time. Her breaths were shallow.

When she finally looked over her shoulder he was sleeping soundlessly. His blond spikes were bending softly against his pillow and one of his hands was relaxed in front of his face, stealing a portion of an adorable image Tifa knew she wouldn't forget for a while.

Eventually the warmth of another nearby and her own sleepiness overcame her, she fell into a deep sleep.

***

It was morning. The sun was cracking through the curtains and falling across Tifa's dark eyelashes. She felt warmth and comfort and safety as if she was coming out of one pleasant dream and into another. She turned her head slightly as she gradually awoke and then became increasingly aware of something long and solid like a pipe lying underneath her neck and across her shoulders. It felt warm. It felt human.

There was a small pressure on her tummy that suddenly came and went away again, sending a sensitive feeling through her navel. Opening her eyes half-way her facial expression then froze. The respectable distance between her and Cloud had been breached. She was lying almost right up against him, half her nightgown still in the spot she had fallen asleep in, the other half about her arms and shoulders trapped between herself and the strong arm that was now underneath her.

She felt the small pressure again. She looked down and saw Cloud's other arm was no longer curled up by his face as it had been when she had fallen asleep, and instead it now fell down from his shoulder, relaxed to form a bridge between them, and his hand was draped across her waist, just under the covers, resting gently on the silky fabric of her top. His fingers were curled reflexively inwards, relaxed. He had been moving his thumb in his sleep.

She looked back up to Cloud's face. His eyelashes were almost white and transparent in the sunlight. He looked angelic. She would not have believed he was real if it wasn't for the very human, though faint, scar struck through his left eyebrow.

She became aware of the feel his breath on the exposed flesh of her collar bone.

Half-awake, half-dreaming, she still felt as if she had never really woken up. A great sense of security had come over her. She could have curled up into the nook of his neck, the broadness of his chest and the strength of his arms and torso and slept their for eternity. Subconsciously she moved a little closer; although there wasn't much of a gap to close in the first place. His right hand then fell gently round the curve of her waist and further beneath the covers, making their position even more like an embrace than before.

Her eyes travelled across his eyebrows, past his blond eyelashes, over the shape of his nose and down to his not thick, but not thin, pink lips that were relaxed in his unmoving and quiet state. Something knotted tightly in her chest and all the way down to her toes. She felt her lips becoming redder and her cheeks dusting with various shades of pink. Her eyes began to close. She suddenly felt a tug at her side and a movement under her neck and he was pulling her closer into his shelter in his sleep. Her hair dragged onto his pillow. His breath brushed onto the curves of her lips. The tips of their noses were about to touch.

If I just inch a little closer... If I just let my lips touch his...

She suddenly turned her head away with a gasp. Her hands clasped over her mouth.

What on Gaia am I thinking?

She shook her head gently and turned back to look at him. He was still sleeping, undisturbed. The clock on his bedside table read six thirty in the morning. It was time to get up.

Slowly she began to remove her weight from his arm which had stretched itself all the way round her shoulders. He made a slight groan as her warmth and weight went from him, but he remained sleeping, his exposed arms curling back a little towards the covers. She tucked the sheets back over him.

She was about to leave when the knotting in her chest arose again and she couldn't help turning round to look at him. He looked almost forlorn in the way his eyebrows had knitted tightly. His outstretched arms and now empty hands had dragged themselves back towards the centre of the bed as if he was trying to capture something in slow-motion.

She smiled.

"Just maybe if things keep going the way they are... " she continued to smile, her thoughts becoming even shy to her as she turned them over in her head, "I won't have to turn away next time."

With a small blush she closed the door gently behind her.