A/N: I don't remember the first time travel fic I read for FF7, but I do remember when I noticed a lot of them – summer 2008. I remember being frustrated because, despite their differences, in many ways they were all the same. Naturally I started writing my own epic fic (that was different in all the important ways), but since I write at about the same rate as glaciers, many of my ideas were introduced before I got even halfway through my (still unfinished epic). But many of them weren't. This is a collection of short ideas that I never saw in other fics. I haven't been really in the FF7 fandom for a while, so let me know if you have seen these ideas elsewhere – obviously I think they are worth reading!

Every chapter should be a new one-shot, of a new idea. I've got a few already written, but see the glacier comment – no promises on posting.

Tifa knew Cloud was gone when she walked in the room. He slept differently, when he was gone. Her footsteps woke him up, as they always did, and she took a deep calming breath, before running over to hold his shoulders down as he woke up.

He was disoriented at first – he always was.

"Mrs. Lockheart…? Am I dead?" he asked, when his eyes had focused on her.

"No Cloud, I'm Tifa," she said. He never seemed to remember, so she had given up trying to keep secrets. "It's a long story, and you need to keep calm."

"You're not Tifa," he said. "You're old!"

"Cloud, stay calm," Tifa said. "Just listen – "

But it was too late. He tried to sit up, and he didn't realize how fast or how strong he was.

She cursed quietly, holding her bloody nose amid the splinters of the bed. Cloud gasped next to her, having caught sight of his face in the mirror. "I'm old!" he exclaimed. "My eyes… and my hands!" He was fascinated by his calluses.

"It's a long story," Tifa repeated, shaking a cure out of her bangle. "Some day you'll hear it before you break the bed. Just…try to walk around slowly and get used to it. I'll explain."

She worked through Nibelheim and Meteor and the children fast enough, having had some practice at this by now. "And then he, that is, you, found some way to switch you – you and him, so he's back there, trying to change it all, and you're here." That part never really got easier. How could she explain something she couldn't understand?

He'd almost gotten the hang of moving around without breaking things. Tifa wanted to believe it came easier to him every time, but couldn't quite let herself.

"So...I'm not a SOLDIER…" he said, studying his eyes in the small mirror.

"Not in name," Tifa sighed. She had just told him he'd saved the world twice, and he fixated on what hadn't come with it. She could almost hate him, sometimes.

"I have to mind the bar," she said, making to leave. "You need some time to think. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

"Can I ask you questions I have tonight, after you close the bar?" he asked. He looked so anxious that she smiled.

"Of course you can," she said.

Edge didn't have as many people as Midgar had had, but more of them needed to drown sorrows than even the residents of Sector Seven. She never had a really quiet night. After wiping down the last counter, she walked slowly upstairs, and found him again asleep on the other bed. She smiled, tucked the blanket higher around his chin, and crept off to sleep in Denzel and Marlene's room. In none of the twenty-eight times before had he stayed awake long enough to actually ask her anything.

He slept differently, when he was gone.

She was working on lunch for Denzel when he appeared the next morning. He'd changed into half of Cloud's armor (that made 24 times he'd tried to get dressed, and 5 times he'd just come down in yesterday's pajamas).

"Good morning, Cloud," Tifa said. "I'm just making lunches, but I can get you breakfast in a few moments." She waited a moment, and-

"I can make breakfast," he offered quietly.

Tifa bent her head and smiled behind her hair. This was a constant. She'd said no the first several times, but given in once and discovered cooking skills were evidently something Cloud had once possessed but lost. "I've set out some eggs and chopped vegetables if you want to make us omelets," she said, and gestured to the kitchen half-hidden behind the bar. "I'll pour us some orange juice when I'm done here. Just don't forget – "

She'd miffed the order again. She cursed quietly and abandoned Denzel's sandwich to rescue Cloud from the sticky mess of broken egg in his hand. "Just don't forget that you're stronger now," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said to the egg remains. He had yet to meet her eyes this morning.

"It's my fault," Tifa said breezily, "You break the egg a full half the time, and I never remember to warn you early enough." She tried for a smile, but he wasn't looking to see it, so she set down a wet towel and a fresh egg in front of him, and went back to finish Denzel's sandwich. It was strange, the way some of this got easier and some never did.

Conversation was difficult for the first few days. The problem was, Cloud was never much of a talker, and after the first seven or eight swaps, Tifa had memorized everything he could remember happening in his last several days before waking up in Seventh Heaven. Similarly, she rapidly got sick to death of explaining the answers to the five or six questions he always asked (how did his mother die? how fast was he if he really tried?). Instead she tried to find new books they had both read as children, or to read the ones he mentioned so she'd have something to talk about next time. It got easier once he was ready to do deliveries.

Tifa wasn't sure what would happen if this Cloud died in her Cloud's body, so she cancelled all deliveries until Swap Eight. That was the first one that had been really successful. Cloud had been gone for four weeks, and she couldn't afford to lose the extra income from the delivery service. So now she gave him a couple days to acclimatize, and then put him to work. Only deliveries in Edge and Kalm though. He was almost laughably bad with a sword, and the monsters got worse away from the cities. After Swap Fifteen she bought him a gun, but she never got used to seeing him without a sword on his back.

When he came home and talked about deliveries, it was almost normal. Except when she forgot it wasn't. "Remember when they drank all their stock?" she laughed one night after he'd delivered bottling equipment to the bar in Kalm. Her Cloud would have replied that they thought they would "drink it rather than baptize the Meteor with it." This Cloud stopped smiling and shook his head.

That was one part that never became easier.

Denzel helped her remember too. He'd stopped really talking to her Cloud after Swap Eight, the long one, but he still liked the current Cloud. They would sit after dinner with heads bent over some motorcycle schematic. Denzel never mentioned to Cloud that he explained the same advances in mechanics every swap. He just appeared less and less when her Cloud was around. Marlene didn't speak to either Cloud much any more. She asked Barrett to take her with him on another oil scouting after Swap Ten and hadn't been back for more than a few days at a time since. Barrett smiled apologetically at Tifa every time they returned. "Jus' a few days this time," he always said. "Which Cloud is it now?"

Like "How has the weather been?" or "I trust business is good?" Except 'Which Cloud?' was always the first question.

Yuffie visited a few weeks in. She and Tifa were having orange juice and laughing over Cait's latest fiasco at the WRO when Cloud appeared again on the stairwell. He'd mastered the art of the armor five days ago (only Swap Twelve and Swap Seventeen had done it faster). Tifa stopped laughing.

"Cloud, this is Yuffie," she said. "Yuffie, Cloud."

"…oh," said Yuffie. She'd met swaps before, but never this far in.

"I'll make breakfast for three," said Cloud after an uncomfortably long pause. When he had disappeared into the kitchen Yuffie stared at Tifa until-

"Number twenty-nine," whispered Tifa. "He's been here 20 days."

Yuffie finished her orange juice in one angry gulp. "Do we even know what will happen to us if he succeeds?" She spoke softly but flung her sharp words like shuriken. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to never have existed!"

"He's trying to make it better," Tifa said helplessly. She'd had this argument with Cid, with Reeve already. Vincent didn't care and Nanaki wouldn't intrude, but it was only a matter of time until Yuffie started it. Why did they think she had any sway over what he did anymore?

"Better," said Yuffie bitterly. "He won't make it any better for me. He only goes back to a few days before the end of the war."

Tifa tried to think of something to say, but there was no real excuse.

"The past can't be changed, Tifa," said Yuffie. "That's the only thing that makes it bearable."

Tifa wanted desperately to scream that she was lecturing the wrong person. "It's not his fault," she said instead, gesturing to the kitchen. "Please be civil."

"I know." Yuffie sounded almost as tired as Tifa. "I'll try."

She did try. She told more stories about Reeve and Cait Sith, and about the pranks she had pulled on her father as a child. They all laughed all through breakfast, and in the afternoon she took Cloud and Denzel out to obliterate a custom sweeper using Knights of the Round.

"I can't stay," she said as she helped Tifa clean the bar that night. She had been planning on a week's visit. " I can't watch this. I'm sorry."

Tifa nodded, and they finished the bar.

"What happened?" asked Yuffie. She had paused at the door and was looking beyond Tifa's shoulder at the staircase to the bedrooms.

"We all know what happened," Tifa said.

At day forty Cloud made his first major departure. They were designing a delivery route over breakfast. Tifa was tracing the roads he would have to travel on the map held down by their glasses when he grabbed her hand, making her look up.

"I don't care about Soldier," he said. "I don't care about what the people in Nibelheim would have said. I like it here, and now."

Tifa was stunned into a few moments silence. Slowly she reached up her free hand to touch his cheek. "So do I," she smiled.

Time passed. The orders to distant customers piled up. Cloud made breakfasts and Tifa made dinners and they talked and laughed. She taught him some boxing. She knew his mind didn't remember anything, but she hoped that maybe his body would, that maybe somehow she could make his future easier for him. On the eighty-fifth day she went up to the roof after closing the bar. She wasn't surprised when he joined her. They watched the stars silently for a while.

"…It's all going to happen to me," he said. "Nibelheim burning, and Zack dying, and Meteor and geostigma…"

She nodded.

"…I'm afraid…" he whispered.

"You won't remember it's coming," she said gently. "And it will all pass in time. Eventually you'll get here. I don't think it's such a bad world now."

"But I must."

She glanced at him. "I suppose so."

"And it won't pass, in time, for you. Which iteration am I?" He'd never asked before.

"Twenty-nine," she said, looking back at the stars. "At eighty-five days, my Cloud's been gone two weeks more than the last longest time." That was Swap Twenty-six.

"Your Cloud," he said, and they were silent again for a long time.

"Do you remember our promise?" she finally asked. "Whenever I'm in trouble, my hero will come and rescue me." Her voice lilted over the familiar words. "Except he doesn't. He just keeps doing this to me, over and over…" She blinked and tears she hadn't shed for twenty-eight swaps rolled down her cheeks.

"I'll rescue you," Cloud said. "I'll find a way." He leaned over her and paused, a silhouette of spiked hair against the stars, before kissing her on the cheek.

After he left, she wondered about the pause. Had he intended to kiss her lips? Would she have minded if he had?

She started counting stars. Her life had become defined by numbers (twenty-nine swaps, four years, he looks twenty-seven, he is sixteen), by firsts and repetitions. The stars were innumerable, eternal. She needed this certainty: she loved Cloud forever. She loved his desire to help, his courage, determination and resourcefulness and honesty. All that was still true. She just didn't know who she was describing anymore.

The next morning Cloud didn't make breakfast.

"I was so close!" he said when he appeared at the top of the stairs. He was holding the most distant orders and had First Tsurugi in its usual place. He didn't say anything more before walking out the door.

Tifa had smiled in greeting; her cheeks started hurting after a few moments and she realized her face had frozen along with her thoughts. Mechanically she made lunch for Denzel and breakfast for one. It took her all morning staring at an empty orange juice glass to realize that the sword had looked strange on Cloud's back. It took her until closing time to accept that her Cloud had not, in fact, returned, but had just left.

Three weeks later Cloud didn't appear in the morning. He'd never asked about her red eyes, like he'd never asked why the rest of Avalanche had stopped visiting. Like he never asked what happened while he was gone.

Tifa did what she had always done. She cleaned, and made drinks, and took care of Denzel and her patrons and her guests. She loved Cloud. She promised herself her happiness would never rest entirely on anyone other than herself. She promised herself she would stop believing promises from Cloud Strife.

And she hoped.

The twelve stairs left her heart pounding harder than a battle with WEAPON. She knew Cloud was back when she walked in the room. He slept differently, when he was here. Her footsteps woke him up, as they always had, and she took a deep calming breath, before running over to him as he woke up.