Chapter 31: In the Dark

The repercussions for the second lost mako reactor occurred quickly. Halfway through the night, Tifa's bar lost its power. There was only a flickering of the lights as warning before suddenly the entire room was plunged into absolute darkness. This was followed by a second of silence as at least half of the patrons in the bar wondered if they'd drunk more than they thought and finally passed out. Then the noise started, but Tifa's crowd wasn't an excitable crowd and so the noises consisted mostly of annoyed curses and the sound of people carefully trying to find their drinks without knocking them over in the dark. From the fact she only heard two distinct sounds of glass breaking on the floor, Tifa thought they'd done pretty good.

Power outages weren't exactly uncommon in the slums. Even with all of the reactors all running, the slums were the last place Shinra bothered direct the power to and the conduits that they used to do so were second hand and in bad repair. Sometimes it was a flicker and sometimes it was a couple of hours.

"First person I catch trying to sneak out the door without paying is getting a boot in the nose," Tifa announced cheerfully to the patrons and got chuckles and groans in response. They all knew the drill. Going by feel, Tifa slid her hands along the bar's edge until she found the nick in it and began to slide her hands down. A hand found her hip just as she was starting to lean down and she jumped. Another hand moved in the way and kept her from banging the top of her head on the bottom of the bar's lip.

"Just me." Cloud's quiet voice and she shot him a glare she knew he couldn't see.

"You do that on purpose, don't you, Strife?" she asked and heard his exhaled chuckle. His arm slipped around her waist and drew her upright and back against him. Snuggling in the dark? Tifa couldn't say it didn't sound like a really good idea… and the dark hid her blush when she thought that - but she was pretty sure that wasn't what was on Cloud's mind.

"What were you looking for?" he confirmed her thought as someone started a pretty rude drinking song, thinking they were secure in the cover of darkness. Tifa recognized the singer's voice however and was just about to call him on it when two other voices joined in.

"Candles," she gestured pointlessly in the dark. "Second drawer down." Despite the fact he couldn't possibly see anything, she felt him nod once against her, the brush of his hair against the side of her face giving it away. Giving her waist a gentle squeeze to tell her to stay put he let go of her and Tifa was suddenly standing alone in the dark feeling cold. Reflexively she rubbed at her arm with her other hand. And then felt a gloved hand close over her loose one from much further down.

Was Cloud down on his heels?

How had he found her hand without fumbling if he couldn't see?

"Biggs, I'm telling Amy you know the words to this song" she remarked and one of the many voices now singing the chorus faltered slightly. Laughter punctuated the verse. Cloud's hand gave hers a light squeeze in the dark and she smiled down at him automatically before realizing he couldn't see it. Could he? Entirely unrelated, she realized she was fighting the ridiculous urge to reach out and stroke his hair.

She'd probably poke him in the nose if she tried it in the dark right now though. The drawer made a noise as it opened and her eyes widened in surprise.

"Matches are right ne- "

"I've got them," Cloud's voice was calm and she heard the sound of a match striking. Light flared, small and brief, and she caught the glint of it in Cloud's blue eyes, gold and blue –

and green –

He lit one of the thick white candles and handed it up to her, filling her world with warmth and golden light. When she had it, he finally let go of her hand to set the almost burned out match to the next candle.

"All right, boys." Tifa set the first candle on the counter. "Anyone's who's staying, come get a candle for your table. Anyone that's going home, drop your money on the way past."

The crowd in the bar thinned a little as some men went home to their families but drinking by candlelight wasn't a new experience to anyone and quite a few of her regular patrons stayed. Cloud lit candles and passed them up to her until every table had one and two burned bright and cheerful on the bar. He got more than one curious glance as the patrons came over to collect their candles and saw where, or rather who, Tifa was getting them from. Cloud didn't seem to notice but by now Tifa thought she knew a little bit about his personality and she thought he noticed and just pretended not to.

"Upstairs?" he asked her and she shook her head with a smile as she took the last candle from him.

"Used to it. But they'll use it as an excuse to stay up later."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah. Aerith seems the type to do that," he agreed so calmly and naturally that it took Tifa a split second to realize he was joking with her. It surprised a laugh out of her and he smiled, a flash of light itself, at the noise, aqua eyes relaxed as he straightened to his full height. For just a minute, in his dark clothes with his golden hair and the dark and candlelight – Tifa knew she'd never seen such a beautiful man.

Even if you weren't supposed to think men were 'beautiful'.

On the other side of the bar, the drunken song fell apart as everyone remembered a different fourth verse and all tried to sing it at the same time. It made Tifa smile. They only sang when the lights were off. She thought a little of it was the shadows that helped give them a bit of anonominity, a little bit of it was the drunkenness – but Tifa suspected it was their natural response to having adversity thrown at them too. In the slums you either fought or you gave up and died. Tifa's patrons on the whole were the kind that would spit in the eye of death even while they were dying. Singing in the dark was just their defiance.

Even if it was off tune, drunken singing.

Tie Me Chocobo Down, Mate was the next song volunteered and Tifa hummed along with it as she collected glasses for Cloud to wash in the sink. While he did, she got the broom and a rag and cleaned up the broken glasses from when the lights had died first. She got a bit of help with that, drunken and clumsy as it was, and it wasn't as if it were the first time she'd had alcohol spilled on her barroom floor.

It beat blood any day…

The Beer's Here, Get It In Gear followed the chocobo song and after that it degenerated into three different versions of The Drunken Miner. Tifa caught Cloud watching it all and the look on his face… it was that little boy look again. The one politely standing outside watching everyone else inside and both curious and a bit confused by what he was seeing. Moving back behind the bar she slipped a hand around his upper arm and leaned against it and he looked down at her questioning. She only shook her head and then rested it against his shoulder and after a minute Cloud went back to watching the men singing.

That lasted until someone started on the It's Business Time song and that's when Tifa moved forward to start shooing them out of her building with laughter. The streets outside were dark and so she made sure everyone was going out in pairs or larger groups. Drunk as they were, she wanted to make sure no one took advantage of them. Johnny was the last to leave and he looked curiously at Cloud, who was back in his usual spot at the end of the bar. Tifa gave him a smile and a nod.

"Make sure you get Wedge home all right," she instructed and Johnny nodded and gave her a shy smile before pulling on his coat and ducking out the door. Tifa pulled it shut behind him and locked it, flipping the sign and then starting to walk around the tables, blowing out the candles as she went. Cloud, sitting on his stool, watched her and it was a comfortable silence. Finally, only the two candles on the bar itself were still lit and Tifa moved over and blew out the first one. Looked over at Cloud and saw him watching her contentedly. Content… she felt that way too in this moment.

"Living without mako-powered lights might not be so bad," she commented and the edges of his lips shifted upward.

"Tonight was nice," he agreed quietly. She paused over the last candle and looked at him, barely visible now in the darkness and candle shadow. Suspecting…

Eyes on his, she blew out the candle.

The world went dark again and Tifa stood where she was, back against the edge of the bar. Waiting. Outside the dim sounds of the slums filtered in but it was muted and far away from the silent room. The dark didn't scare Tifa, it never had, and her eyes moved in it, looking from memory around the room she was in. Unable to actually see a thing, she was just starting to wonder if she'd been wrong – guessed wrong about Cloud earlier – when she heard a sound directly in front of her. She'd felt him a second before she'd heard that single footstep though and even in the dark, she could tell when one of his hands settled on the bar on either side of her. Blind with her eyes open, she raised her face and gave him a smile.

"I thought so."

"One of the side effects," his voice was soft to match the darkness and only just a little above her.

"Is walking silently a side effect too?" Reaching out just a little, her fingers found the fabric of his sleeves and felt the warm skin of his arms underneath as she rested her hands there.

"No," there was just the smallest amount of amusement in his voice. "That's training."

She nodded. And then crossed her eyes at him in the dark. Heard his stifled laughter and smiled.

"Your eyes don't glow. I thought I'd seen them glow before."

"SOLDIERs wouldn't be much good if you could spot them in the dark because they had to open their eyes to see," his voice was logical, not defensive. Tifa was glad. She wanted to be able to talk to him, ask him, and not worry about it making him withdraw. She didn't ask because she thought it was frightening or marked him out as anything other than Cloud, she asked because she was curious. "They reflect light though. Like cat eyes. Even small amounts of it."

That made sense and she nodded again. In the dark, she could almost feel him smile.

"My turn," he said and she raised her eyes to look at him expectantly. Not able to imagine anything in her life half as interesting as what she had questions about in his. In the darkness she could feel him shift closer and her hands on his arms slid up to almost his shoulders.

"Does everyone love you?"

His throaty voice was soft when he asked it and very, very close in the dark. For just a moment, Tifa wasn't sure she'd heard him right, brain refusing to work past the skip of her heart. Then she had to pause and think about her answer, brows coming down.

"Not really," she picked her words carefully. Trying to put into sound what had only been feelings in her heart before. "I'm – familiar. Most of the men have known me for years. I pay attention to them and I don't judge them. They like the way it makes them feel about themselves. I make them feel important. Because everyone is but not a lot of people down here remember that. With me they get to smile and forget their problems for a little while. It's not me they love, it's the way they feel when they're here. It's the way I make them feel just because I pay attention."

It was silent in the darkness for a long moment and she could feel Cloud sifting through what she'd said. After a long minute, his voice quietly stated:

"You make me feel important."

It made her soften and she smiled at the man she couldn't see.

"Good," she whispered.

It was quiet between them again, Cloud's arms warm against her sides as his hands stayed on the bar. Her hands almost on his shoulders but stopped just a little way down his arms instead. Almost an embrace – not an embrace. But warm – so warm and Tifa decided she loved the dark. Cloud exhaled slow and she felt the warm brush of it against her lashes and the top of her nose.

"Tifa… who makes you feel important?"

It was a soft sound in the dark and for a long moment Tifa just enjoyed the way that felt too. Then she opened her eyes she hadn't realized she had closed and looked up at where she knew his face was. Her lips curved up in a soft smile.

"The people I love. Being around them makes me feel important." He waited in the dark and so, after a moment, she named them off for him.

"Marlene and Denzel," the names were magic whispers in the night, full of warmth and love as they slipped out of her heart and across her tongue. "Aerith. Barrett. My father." Summoning up all her courage, brave in the dark even though it sent heat pouring across her face, she forced herself to add in a whisper:

"You…"

The muscles under her hands moved and she could feel the heat of him as he stepped forward. The small of her back pressed into the bar but it was all right because Cloud was in front of her and solid and warm and being pressed up against him felt like heaven even if it did make her palms tingle and her stomach go funny. She wished they'd left a candle burning – because she wanted to see his face…

"What about Leon?"

She did search for his face in the dark then, at his quiet question, but there was no hint of blue in the dark.

"Leon too," she agreed. Shook her head a little. "But not the same way."

He made a noise in the dark, a soft, barely there sound low in his throat and she felt shivers across her scalp as his fingers moved through the stands of her hair that had fallen across the top of the bar and his hands. Then his hands slipped down and found her hips. Tugged gently.

"Come on," his voice was soft in the dark. "We should go upstairs now."

He stepped back and she let him draw her along through the night, his hands sliding down her arms to find her hands and lead her. She couldn't see a thing. She could walk through the bar from memory easily and did it all the time. She still let him lead her though, trusting completely as she followed him through the dark.

Tomorrow she'd go back to being practical and level headed. Tonight… tonight she'd follow him anywhere, just as long as he was holding her hands…