Gaiden Chapter III
Fate and Love
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"I… I don't understand." Her tone of voice bordered on sobbing. She couldn't comprehend the reason why he wanted to leave; much less why did he want to leave her. No… she wouldn't let him leave. The past few months had been the best part of her life. She wouldn't let all those times go to waste. Her amber eyes, albeit glistened with tears, glowed with a strong confidence. "You can't leave… I won't let you." She walked towards the door and leaned against it.
"Move Tifa," he said. His voice, completely polar to his companion, was monotonous. Tifa truly did not believe, by evaluating his voice, that he was indifferent about leaving her. Just the same, she stared at him as he gathered his swords and jammed them into one complete blade. "This does not concern you." He stood up from his bed and made his way toward the door. There, he met the gaze of the most stubborn woman he had ever come to known. "Move…" His blue eyes, again polar to his companion, were filled with sadness, completely offset to his imposing appearance.
"…At times like this, I just don't understand you at all, Cloud." She lowered her head causing her black hair to cover her face. Had it not been, the inundation of tear could have been easily seen. "Deign as you may to your stupid aloof nature, there were times when you are the most caring guy I ever meet. You took care of me when I was sick, and I you." She raised her eyes to his, and shouted, "Why, after all the blissful memories, do you want to leave!"
"You remind me too much of her," was his slow retort. Gently grabbing her shoulder, he moved her aside. She was less than reluctant. Her sobbing overcame her persistence to keep him here. "Sorry… When ever I'm with you, I lose track of my purpose." He paused for a moment, before continuing. "I can't let my past die… I can't let him get away. Not now… not ever." He opened the door and stepped into a small puddle. Looking up, without having need to, he noticed it had begun to rain. "Good-bye." He looked back at her and waited for her farewell.
"…Cloud…" Neither making a gesture to make him come back nor a wiping off a tear to show her remorse, she continued with a downcast look. "When I first met you, you were floating half-dead in the ocean. All by my self, I took care of you for weeks on end till you were strong enough to speak; and the first word out of your mouth was my name." She clasped her hand over her face. "Ever since then, I had always thought it was fate. It was fate for you to be there and for me to find you. It was fate for you to say my name, when I never told you it. It was fate for you to be there, to be beside me, in my hour of need." Her sobbing grew into something that bordered on hysterics. "Why do you deny it?"
"Because," he whispered, turning away from her. "Fate has never been kind to me."
A burst of wind, the tearing of fabric; the emersion of the demon wing onto the misty air brought nothing short of silence. Its presence had, at one time, shocked her. But now, it seemed all too natural to be on his back; like feathered wings on a majestic bird.
"I'm sorry…" In a flash of blinding light, he was gone.
Left alone, Tifa's sobbing grew stronger. Why? Today started like any other; her waking him up so he could help her manage the bar, him acting distant yet was bent on getting closer to her, her confronting him on the daily basis of whom does what and when, and him retorting to her snide claims of him loving her with feigned annoyance.
As she could recall, as the dawn grew nigh, his mood earlier changed drastically; he went about the rest of the day with a melancholy yet frustrated mood. To her shame, it wasn't until he confronted Tifa about his leaving that she finally noticed.
"Why didn't I notice sooner?" She questioned herself. In the pit of her stomach, she felt an overwhelming sadness. It wasn't until she questioned herself again why that that she changed moods all together was. She was in love with him. She felt an entirely different feeling than before; love, and lots of it. Somehow, her feelings provided something of transcendental feeling to her entire body.
She smiled, noticing why her body was becoming transparent. Tifa wouldn't let him go that easily.
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END
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A/N- This is the last Gaiden Chapter. As you, the reader, can tell, these GCs provide information crucial to the plot, and are not fillers caused by my lack of updates or 'mental blocks' for the plot. Ex. One point of this chapter was to confuse you even more; but the main reason is to foreshadow an event parallel to something that was not mentioned in this entire chapter.