Suspicions Revealed

She woke up with a start. Her mother, her own mother who she hadn't seen in years... She had felt her presence as she had woken up and then felt it dissolve again into the sightless depths of the room. Sighing, she laid back and pulled the bedclothes back over herself in the way she used to as a child and snuggled into her own body heat, for Cloud, like most nights, was no longer there, next to her, any more. It just was safer that way now, even if it was lonelier.

She buried her head further into her pillow.

"Well... I hope you'll be glad to see me soon, Mom," she choked.

It had been three months. She was almost proud for having survived that long.

It was better that Cloud was keeping his distance. She hadn't had to say anything. As Cloud had felt her reject him more and more, as much as she cursed herself deep down for it, he had begun to get back later and later, late enough so that he knew he shouldn't wake her, and so choosing to sleep in the cot in his room instead of the one they normally shared, or so he disguised it as. It hurt, but in a way it brought her peace because she knew she didn't have to worry about him discovering her secret, and she didn't want to explain. Asleep in bed there was always the chance she may have a random attack, or so she had heard, and either way it was becoming more and more often that she'd wake up and find stains not only on her top but all over the sheets as well. She didn't want Cloud to see that, to see that she was as susceptible to leaving the world at any moment just as much as Denzel, or any other person infected with geostigma. He was strong, she knew that, but she still didn't want to upset him in any way; he was still sensitive, and she knew she was the love of his life; although sometimes she wondered if she was just frightened of what he would do if he ever found out that she had kept it from him for so long.

It had been tough juggling running the bar, looking after the children, looking after Denzel in particular as he got worse, hiding and covering her bandages as the attacks came more often, washing sheets, washing clothes, washing towels, flannels and even the occasional smear of evidence on a rug or pillow. However, it was nearing winter now so she would to get away with wearing extra layers without raising suspicion. She needed that now more than ever since the stigma was even larger than before.

One thing that was compromising her charade was however was how much weaker she was becoming. Unlike Denzel she couldn't afford to lie in bed, she had to make sure she was up and busy and seemed absolutely healthy. If Cloud or the children asked if she was okay when she looked tired she would just say that it had been a busy week, and then carry on with whatever she was doing and maybe even grab a cup of strong coffee to give herself a boost. When she had a miniature attack while working she'd either rush to the store room or kitchen, whichever was closest, or, if she didn't feel it coming on before it struck, stand at the bar and dig her nails into the woodwork as it passed. If anyone noticed she'd say she had stubbed her toe and then head to the wash room to change her bandages. She had always kept a first aid kid in there. No one suspected a thing.

She just found it annoying that the muscles underneath and around the mark were beginning to fail her, deteriorating as each day passed. She had to distribute most of her lifting power to her right arm to compensate whenever lifting now, no matter how heavy or light an object was. She realised it would become noticeable to others over time if she didn't adjust quickly enough. It was just as well Cloud spent less time around her as it meant she could plan to restock the cabinets and shelves whenever he was out for the day or in his office which was almost all the time now. She knew how perceptive he was, and if anyone would have caught her out it would have been him.

"Tifa?"

She whipped round to see him, Cloud himself, standing right behind her. She had to stop getting so lost in her thoughts like that, too.

"Yes?" she asked quietly, her shaky tone betraying her calm mask.

"Is everything okay?"

His expression was like the one she had kept seeing him wearing lately as he looked at her. It was distant and yet she could see a hurt in it, and a want, and it made her uncomfortable because she knew it was her own doing, and she also knew it reflected how she felt in return. She missed him.

"I was just thinking, that's all," she smiled.

He came closer until all she could see were his bright, stunning blue eyes of mako. She felt her lower back hit the kitchen counter and suddenly there was no where else to go.

"You'd tell me if there was something wrong?" he asked intently, his intense eyes piercing deep into her own.

"Yes..." she managed with a hushed breath, hoping on the heavens he wouldn't be able to see through her lie.

He kept his eyes entranced with hers a little longer before tilting his jaw in a little nod. The heaviness in his eyes lightened and she felt his arms lock behind her back. To her it felt as if it had been so long since she'd been this close to him. His eyes half disappeared under his eyelids as he leaned in to her. Alarms started to go off frantically in her head but they were ignored. She couldn't avoid him any longer, pretend she was not bothered by being starved of his touch, his love for as long as she had. She wanted to be close to him, the man she had always loved, just once more before her life was truly over, was that so wrong? His lips began to take hers in a small kiss. Then the kiss grew, his tenderness sending and comfort and warmth rushing through her like a drug. She couldn't let go of him. They had both been starved of affection, and this was the end result.

His arms loosened slightly and she felt the tips of his fingers tracing along the band of her apron, up to the fabric of her top, and then, millimetre by millimetre, he began to lift the fabric so delicately that she didn't register what he was doing until she felt the final tug of the fabric around her ribcage. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She was so exposed, her illness on plain display to any onlooker, but Cloud was too wrapped up in kissing her to be remotely aware. She had to use that to escape and quickly. Her arms that had been threaded tightly around and behind his neck came apart slowly and she began to draw them back to her sides, her fingers brushing his neck and shoulders as she did so. They then found his hands still holding onto her top, and she curled them around his to form a finger-lock, something intimate enough not to raise his suspicions of her rejection of him to quickly. As he forgot everything else and mutually threaded his fingers through hers, she felt her top fall back down with a flood of relief. Cloud immediately sensed the easing of tension in her body and broke the kiss. The pressure of the hold of his hands on hers strengthened as he realised what she was doing, yet again.

"I have things to do," she said with forced calm, a slight ring of apology to it.

His eyes turned distant.

"Okay." His voice was deep and submissive.

Her eyes flickered away from his gaze as he began to edge away from her, and then, like that, he was gone, his back to her, walking out of the kitchen and to his office. She brought her hands to her face, remembering the precious moment she had just had with him. She would never want to do this to him, ever, but it was better than him getting too close and finding out the truth. Or so she told herself.

"They say geostigma isn't infectious," a news presenter said inquisitively to the scientist sitting opposite him on the TV.

"No, it isn't," a plain man with glasses agreed. "Or at least not in the typical way a disease spreads via proximity." The scientist was sat in a round, red leather chair.

"How do you mean?" the news presenter pressed.

"Well, there are theories that the development of this disease is more psychological than we first thought."

"Psychological?" The news presenter questioned with pretentious interest.

"Yes. The results aren't conclusive yet but from the research my team and I have been conducting we have found a common trend of acute despair and depression in the victims. It would also explain why the highest percentage victims are survivors of Meteor, then the second highest percentage are those who knew people who died during the disaster or who have already died as a result of the disease itself, and then the third highest are those who are currently around loved ones who are already infected and/or they are taking care of."

"Yet I understand none of this is conclusive yet," the presenter made sure to repeat.

"Well, of course. We have only studied a hundred or so victims so far. In order to have a stronger conclusion..."

And so the TV rattled on.

Tifa sat on the corner of a chair holding a mug of coffee snugly in between her palms as she watched trails of milk swirl round and round in the liquid with the slightest tilts of her wrists. Then she stopped abruptly and took a sip, a long, drawn-out sip of strong coffee which sent a buzz through her exhausted, deteriorating body.

Without looking with her eyes she focused her attention back to the subject being discussed on the TV. Her eyes were clouded-over from fatigue. Her voice was rough like sandpaper.

"How interesting."

Another attack. They were so often now she was too tired to feel the pain any more. The mark had spread up and around her shoulders and to the base of her neck. Why was it consuming her so much more quickly than it did Denzel or many others? It was a good thing, of course; she'd happily speed up her one-way journey to death if it slowed his... but that wasn't how things worked. One thing more than anything else that concerned her though was who would look after Denzel once she was gone. Marlene and Cloud might cope without her, maybe, and then perhaps Barrett would come back to help take care of them. Though he'd probably take Marlene away with him once Denzel had... once he'd joined her... and then leave Cloud all on his own. All on his own? That worried her the most.

Could Cloud really cope on his own?

She squirmed on the bed as her insides twisted and convulsed at whatever it was the geostigma was doing to her. She had laid down on her bed in the sunshine and somehow fallen asleep. Now she was in so much pain, so much more pain.

When the pain had passed she pushed herself up promptly from the bed and took the top blanket with her at the same time. Blanket in the washing machine; herself in the shower. It was all washed away. The bandages were burnt to ashes; new, white bandages were used to replaced them. No one would know. No one would ever know until she had died what she had gone through everyday. But she wasn't playing the martyr, she was trying to save the despair of others who cared about her. It was worth it. Nothing was more important than them.

Another afternoon, just. It was sunny. Cloud was home sorting through the previous month's invoices and the children were helping around the bar. There were few customers sat around the tables and chairs but it was a Sunday afternoon, after all.

Cloud had been watching Tifa from his corner of the room. He had positioned himself just right so that he could see most of her when she served behind the bar, and could see her clearly wherever she was serving customers at the tables. To him she seemed fine, with the great exceptions that there was something dull in her skin tone, her smile and her usually warm and bright eyes. Things like that bothered him. It was little, but she was also going out of her way, maybe on a subconscious level, to avoid using her left arm over her right. He had also noticed that she had lost some weight. She was thinner and her cheeks were more sunken than he'd ever seen them. It was beginning to alarm him every time he looked at her.

There was a pause in orders so she rested on the bar a little, like she would usually do. It was nothing out of the ordinary, or at least at first. She had seemed preoccupied observing the customers to make sure they were okay, but then her gaze grew distant and thoughtful. It had hit him like a slap round the face when her facial expression had changed to the extent that she looked so sad she looked like she was in pain. He leaned forward in his seat. Her expression then turned to a resistant grimace; she frowned intensely, her eyes squinted, she breathed in sharply through her mouth and then locked her jaw. Her arms were tightly wrapping around her body.

"Could we get a glass of water?" a couple called from a table.

Her eyes snapped open and she gave a nod, it was overly gentle and forced. She pried her arms away from her sides with an apparent amount of effort and then disappeared quickly into the storeroom, the whole time her posture being rigid, stiff and upright. Why would she go to the storeroom for just a glass of water? She came back several minutes later with two bottles of mineral water. It made more sense to him now, but how could it have taken her so long to find the bottles? She was usually so organised.

She poured the glass of still water and added some ice. Marlene came over enthusiastically to take it from her when she was finished. He watched Tifa then lean back on the bar surface. He was relieved to see the glimmer of a warm smile back on her face but then it went disturbingly sad again. More important than that though, whatever it was that had caused her to tense up so much was now gone. What had been wrong? He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest as he went deep into thought. Was she sick?

"I'm just going to go check that the washing's done, okay?" she said to Marlene when she had skipped back.

Marlene gave a little nod and took up a more eager view of the customers from her side of the bar as Tifa slipped off to the garage. Cloud's eyes followed her, and then so did his feet.

Entering the garage Tifa checked over her shoulder quickly and then walked over to the washing machine. The sheets inside were wet, clean and evidence-free as usual. She tossed them into the dryer and set the dials to the normal settings before pressing the "on" button. She unzipped her black vest and lifted up her top to glance at her left side. The bandage needed to be changed but otherwise it only appeared as a dusky gray underneath the white top and that was okay. It wasn't too noticeable. It had been worse before. She climbed on top of the dryer with one knee and and began to reach for the extra box of bandages that she had hidden behind the soap powders, her top stretching over the folds of bandages round her waist as she did so.

"Tifa!"

Her breath caught in her throat. He was charging through the door and down the steps to where she was knelt. It was fast, too fast. He grabbed her, pulled her down, and his right hand flew up her top as the other pinned her hard against the machine.

"Cloud -"

She was silenced by the haunted way his hand was tracing under her top and over the folds of the bandages. Down his fingers went from her shoulder, her arm, and down the curve of her waist. He didn't look at her, and she had to control herself from crying out as an empty, gaunt look filled his features.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispered.

It took her a long moment to answer.

"I didn't want you to hurt you," she replied honestly.

His eyes met hers, his right hand still resting lightly on the dark gray. His hand shifted and stroked away a tear that had fallen down her cheek. Her eyes were no longer dull, they were full, warming, red and emotional. Looking into her eyes tore down his walls of anger, and the feelings welling in his heart overruled. Bringing his arms around her he pulled her into a tight, reassuring embrace. Her own arms came underneath his and she hugged him back, burying silent sobs into his shoulder which only made him hold her tighter, more desperately. The realisation was quick but numb for him: he loved her more than anything and now he was going to lose her. This was one thing he couldn't protect her from, and fate had thrown it straight at his face in mockery. Geostigma meant death, a slow, painful death, and Tifa was already half-way there.