and now the moment you've all been waiting for... yep, Red talks a little bit more! 'Cause I'm sure that's what's going to be the big thing people notice in the next few chapters. Seriously though, hope everyone feels happy by the end of this spat of chapters. To my best beloveds - oceanee - awww, what awesome reviews! you can review every single chapter for the rest of time if you want, I LOVE the detail and emotion you put into them. Makes me grin like an idiot. And I'm glad you're of a mind with Tifa when it comes to the 'are they, aren't they?' about Zack and Cloud. It's one of the subtle points I'm enjoying being able to make. Cal - glad Marlene made you giggle, I almost popped a rib writing it because she kept saying things I wasn't expecting to come out. It was fun. And I'm glad you picked up on the minor Zack perhaps difference. It was intentional. Jini - awww, chapter 70 must be for you then. I'm so glad you're delving into the characters, I feel like I'm doing something right when a reader gets into the psychology of 'so and so'. I too love the team up of Zack, Tifa, and Cloud. I would love that opportunity in a game one day and they're a blast to write interaction-wise. You also nailed Tifa exactly and entirely on the nose with why she's so sure Cloud's in love with someone else. A-wesome! Dis - w00t! I'll break out the bubbly. I'm glad I've got you stumped, it means I'm doing something right! Or horribly, horribly wrong - lol. I'll do my best to keep things interesting. and - oh man, I laughed so hard at the image of Marlene with a projector and yard stick to 'explain' things to Tifa! That was GREAT! :'D - I'm so glad you're enjoying the story. Yep, the Zack that isn't Zack but might be Zack - don't worry, there's more to come. Just... not too soon ;) And yeah, go Denzel! Well, he IS an older brother. as well as - awwww, I'm so glad I'm doing well with Aerith. She's so abused or overused and even though she's not the main main character of the story I'm glad I'm not making her boring or trite. Fairheartstrife - I will simply say 'aye, aye, captain'. Seelenspiel - whee! so glad you're rocking the ride! Tell me if these next three make you happy. Biskitty - lol, the date at the Golden Saucer! That would be funny. come to think of it... they ARE going to the Golden Saucer about chapter 74.... OCV - hey, welcome to the ride! Pull up a chair and get comfy - we keep our snacks in the fridge. Sorry you're sick though - hope you feel better soon. I'll send you mental Florida orange juice to help, okay? And don't worry - Leon is Leon, not Squall. It would be way too hard to write for TWO guys that live entirely in their heads and manage to keep Tifa the slightest bit informed what was going on with them - lol. And yep - Paine! Great call. As a 'get well' note, I hope these next three chapters make you smile, cause that's the best medicine there is. demonegg- LOL - yeah, Tifa's got priorities. Those Lockhart siblings have to stick together. And - ehehehehee - 'promise' 'late'... yep, that's EXACTLY what Cloud was going to say ;) Cause he's Cloud and nothing's straightforward for him. Plushies - we're gonna be RICH! vx-luna-xv - I KNOW! I had no idea it would grow to this when I started. Kinda enjoying it though. I'm along for the ride as much as anyone else ;) Horky!!! - Horky! you're back! SO AWESOME!! heh heh - you liked 'nibelheim'. I had fun being boring with the title when you know everyone's going to skip up to the chapter titled 'sex'! And awww, thank you. I really do hope that I live up to expectations. I would hate to start off well and taper off at the end. And - there's lots more Tifa introversion (and distraction) ahead ;) so, gang - shall we?
Chapter 69: Moonlight
Tifa had to tell Aerith. It was Zack's life and his decision who he told – but it was also the story of the man Aerith had loved – and for all Tifa could tell, might still love. It didn't seem right to leave her wondering. She didn't mention it to Zack but when he walked with her back to her room and Aerith was there with the children they exchanged looks and she knew he understood.
"Come on," he held out his arms and Marlene ran over with happy abandon to throw herself into them, already hopeless smitten with the dark haired charmer and it didn't matter what name he called himself Tifa thought. "Me and Cloud will take the kids down to the bonfire for a while. I hear they caught some rats in the desert and they're going to be roasting them over the fire tonight."
"Eww," Marlene's protest almost drowned out Denzel's:
"Na uh. Really? Cool!"
Zack gave Tifa a smile and a wink as Denzel trotted over to stand near Cloud and she made shooing motions at all of them and sent them on their way. When the door was closed she turned back to Aerith who was just finishing her nightly conversation with her father. Aerith took one look at her and folded her hands in her lap after she closed the PHS.
"Oh boy."
"Yeah," Tifa sat down on the edge of the bed.
"You told Cloud about the sex talk and he's decided to become a monk he's so scarred at the idea of little Marlene mentioning him and sex in the same sentence."
It made Tifa burst into laugher and she leaned over to throw her arms around her friend in a hug.
"No." Tifa softened. "It's about Zack."
Aerith drew in a deep breath and then nodded.
"Okay," she locked eyes with Tifa. "I thought so. Tell me."
So Tifa did. What they'd heard, what she suspected, what they'd talked about. She ran through it point by point for her friend and Aerith stayed silent and nodded from time to time. She saw the pain in her friend's eyes. She knew Aerith hadn't believed that Zack was her Zack but there had been that glimmer of hope at least and now it wasn't there. Aerith's Zack had died and this one wasn't hers at all. By the end of the story, Aerith's lips were very tight and the hands she had clasped in her lap were white knuckled but she nodded.
"Thank you," she managed quietly. "I – needed to know that."
Tifa felt miserable but somehow hugging didn't seem like what Aerith wanted right now. Quiet, her friend stood up.
"I – think I want to go be alone for a while. Okay?"
Tifa nodded. Understanding.
"Come back when you're done," she told the other woman. "We're family so Marlene says we have to sleep together and there's plenty of room for you and the kids on the bed."
Aerith gave a weak smile and leaned down to hug her friend briefly.
"I know."
After she left, Tifa sat on the edge of the bed for a while. Not thinking, just – letting everything settle itself inside and around her. Eventually, she got up with a sigh and went into the bathroom to draw a hot bath. Shutting and locking the door behind her, she sat on the edge of the tub while it filled and very slowly took off her shirt, or rather Cloud's shirt, even though it didn't smell like him anymore. Then she turned the water off and played with the bandages that covered her from collarbone to waist. Very slowly, very carefully, she started to peel them off and unwind them, heart feeling tighter and tighter the more she unwound. When she was finally naked from the waist up, she looked down. Reached up with a hand that wasn't entirely steady and touched where the long red scar started. For a second her breath caught and she felt a flash – felt that pain, that impossible pain, and remembered what choking on her own blood felt like. With a weak noise, she shook her head, surprised to find tears in her eyes. With the back of her hand, she wiped them away.
She'd survived. It was just a scar. Why did it make her feel so weak and like crying?
Quick, she slipped out of the rest of her clothes and stepped into the bath. The water was hot enough to make her hiss as she lowered herself into it, muscles that had cramped from holding Zack and sleeping awkwardly protesting as she lowered them into the heat. Laying her head back against the rim of the tub and resting her hands on its sides, she shut her eyes.
Her chest ached. Inside and out.
She stayed that way for a long time and finally ducked her head under the water and washed her hair. She rinsed herself off and washed her skin but she couldn't bring herself to touch the scar. Last night, Cloud's touch had accepted it. Tonight, she couldn't force hers to do the same.
Finally clean, she dried off and put on clean clothes. Her own. She wasn't an invalid anymore and she couldn't use that as the excuse to keep wearing Cloud's shirts. Especially when she knew he didn't have that many to start with. She picked up the bathroom and then picked up the main room, leaving the lights off and working by the bright moonlight that pooled in through the huge windows she'd left the curtains open on. Eventually she was satisfied – and a little bit more settled inside – and so she found a book and curled up on the bed, turning on just the tiny light next to her so that she could read. At some point, she dozed off and the next thing she was aware of was the sound of the door softly opening and shutting again.
She recognized the sounds of the footsteps however and so she left her eyes closed and stayed relaxed. Cloud's voice, just on the edge of her hearing, instructed the kids to get ready for bed and she heard the 'quiet' patter of their getting ready. She didn't hear Zack but she thought that if Cloud was here with the kids than the other man was somewhere and it was okay. She wondered how bad it had been for Cloud, dividing his time between his deathwatch over her and staying with Zack to keep the other man sane. Because Tifa had no doubt at all in her mind that finding out you were supposed to be a monster was enough to drive a man insane. Sometimes... it amazed her that Cloud had gone so long in his life thinking it and stayed as gentle and determined as he had.
Cloud's soft boot steps moved around the room, putting away the kids' things she guessed, and Tifa dozed lightly, content and soothed by the sounds around her. She heard the murmurs of her family and then felt the bed shift as Marlene and Denzel crawled into it with her. Her book was slipped out of her lax fingers and set aside and the gold light above her was switched off. She heard Cloud still quietly moving around the room and then, just as she was getting ready to really fall asleep again, his low voice above her.
"Make a hole."
Before she had time to puzzle over the words, the kids, already drowsy, were shifting to make room for him and to her surprise, Cloud carefully crawled into bed with them, settling down along Tifa's back and the weight of one of his arms settled over her waist. He smelled vaguely of wood smoke and under that clean wind and the faintest hint of lightening. She relaxed into his chest with a smile and felt his almost quiet exhaled chuckle. Without seeming to realize it, his thumb slipped under the hem of her shirt and brushed, calloused pad against the sensitive skin of her stomach.
"Go back to sleep," he murmured in her ear. The way he'd just made her stomach jump and the heat flush her skin, she wasn't sure she'd be able to but he didn't do more and in time the sounds of her siblings' breathing set her back to sleep.
She woke with a start some time later, unsure why her eyes had jerked open in the shadow and moonlight; just that she was suddenly wide-awake. Cloud's arm was still over her and she was cradled back against him. Marlene was curled up against her stomach and Denzel was probably on the other side of Cloud. It seemed they'd always slept this way.
Cloud was awake already as well and when he felt her body stiffen, his hand spread. A large, warm hand that had somehow in the night ended up under her shirt and spread across her stomach. Which, Tifa admitted to herself as she briefly shut her eyes at what that did to her nervous system, was definitely distracting her from whatever had woken her up.
Until she heard it again.
The barely there, whisper thin sounds of someone outside the door of her room. Someone… sniffing. And it wasn't the sounds of a human's quick inhales and short nose clearing exhales at all, yet somehow Tifa knew it wasn't Red. Cloud's hand tightened on her skin and she felt the pressure of his fingers. A quick glance showed his eyes were aqua and glowing in the dim light, narrow and fixed on the door. His voice came out and it was low and dangerous with a dark, throaty rumble under its surface. It elongated the warning.
"Vincent…"
The sound outside the door stopped. A pause. And then a sneeze. Something large and yet much lower to the ground than a human moved past the window, throwing its shadow across the curtains as it passed by and continued on. The children slept on in peace, blissfully unaware.
"Cloud?" Tifa whispered and he shook his head, other arm slipping under her to curl around her as well.
"Everyone's safe. He's interested in you and Aerith and I left Aerith with Zack."
She was getting used to him understanding her, so she wasn't surprised he'd answered the question she'd needed instead of the one most people would have assumed she was asking. But his answer brought up even more questions - which was another something he seemed very good at doing. And it would be easier to concentrate if his thumb wasn't rubbing absently against her stomach under the fabric of her shirt.
"You're soft," his murmur moved against her ear, sounding young and touched with just the hint of wonder. Answering what she hadn't asked again. His arms around her tightened to pull her closer back against him. "How can you be so soft? You're as tough as iron… but you're so soft."
"Cloud…" she managed weakly. Questions about Vincent and Aerith and Zack melting along with the rest of her brain. Even though she knew they were really important questions to ask. He made a soft noise against her, wordlessly denying and when she started to shift so she could face him, his arms tightened and held her from moving.
"Don't," he whispered.
"Why?" she whispered back just as quietly and he shook his head but she felt the tension in his body and in his arms and hands as they held her and stayed still on her. Something was wrong – and she didn't know what.
"Cloud…?"
"Tifa…" his voice was an exhale and it held bottomless unspoken words in its depths. "…don't…"
Really worried now and forgetting entirely about anything outside her door, she shifted against him. His arms were like iron but he wasn't willing to hurt her and so she managed to roll over to face him. She was very aware of how intimately it brought their bodies together but she forced herself to concentrate on his face. On the glowing concentrated blue of his eyes that were watching her as if he were memorizing something he was going to lose. Concerned, she reached up and slipped her fingers down his cheek. For a moment, his eyes lidded and it almost hid the flash of pain she saw in them.
"Tifa…" her name was a warning.
"Cloud…" she repeated in the same tone because he wasn't telling her what was wrong and she wasn't going to play games about it. It made the edges of his lips curve and he exhaled an almost silent sound. When his eyes opened again they were bottomless and the most amazing jewel blue Tifa had ever seen. She thought they glowed because he had light inside him.
"I shouldn't... Tifa – I just shouldn't."
She had no idea what he was talking about, just that his voice was starting to sink into her skin and it didn't sound very sure. He was fighting something, and not very well. She could tell that and could also tell it wasn't at all like that night in Nibelheim. This seemed much less violent in him and much deeper. But it was causing him pain, she could see that in his eyes. Something so old and worn and lost that it – she thought it was a part of him. Or had been for a very long time. Wanting to make it better, easier – wanting him to not break her heart with what she saw in his eyes, she reached up and tenderly brushed the hair back from his forehead.
"Chocobo Head," she teased affectionately and his eyes softened and yet went somehow an even more full blue. One of his hands found her face and cupped her cheek.
"My Tifa," he murmured and it held an entire world in it. And then he lowered his head and covered her lips softly with his.
