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Enjoy this new chapter.

Chapter 23: Interrogation

Tifa was taking too long to recover for her taste. She wasn't used to being still; she was used to moving around and taking care of her business and taking care of herself. These days, Cloud was doing both. And while that was sweet, she was ready to not depend on him so heavily. That, and something was still eating at her mind.

Rude. She had so many questions about him. Apparently even though her friends had been interrogating him to find out everything that happened, he wasn't budging. It had been one week since they started speaking to Rude. That was two weeks after the incident. That was enough time for Tifa to deal with her injuries. Of course the ribs weren't healed, but she was alright moving around now. And today, that was what she was going to do.

She convinced Cloud to let her see Rude. It wasn't an easy task at all, but he agreed to take her on the condition that she was careful not to get too upset. Tifa had promised, even though she knew that it was a promise she would break. How could she not get upset over this?

Once she was done fixing herself up in her normal outfit, she went downstairs in her home and told Cloud she was ready. He put a sign on the door of the bar saying it was closed and then they were on their way to the place where Rude was currently in custody. It was a small place, right on the outskirts of town. Nobody was aloud in except for the former members of AVALANCHE, those approved by them, and the few guards that were in charge of watching Rude.

Tifa and Cloud arrived when everybody else was already there, not that it made much of a difference for her. She had been waiting a week for this day. This was the day when she would finally be able to see her kidnapper and former lover face-to-face. She would finally get the answers that she sought and perhaps find peace to move on.

Or maybe she would find something not so good.

She chased those thoughts away, looking to her friends. This was it. They were all standing right outside Rude's locked room, with two guards standing at the door. Tifa had permission to go in. Her friends would be standing by if she needed anything. She was ready. But at the same time, she wasn't ready at all.

Ms. Lockhart forced herself to exhale a calm breath before she looked to the guards. She nodded faintly to them and signaled that she was ready to go in, though her heart was beating irregularly in her chest. She needed to pull it together. Fast.

The guard opened the door, revealing a room that was white all around. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all plain except for the front wall having a window that appeared to be a mirror for anyone in the room, but in reality, it was a window that people on the outside could look through to see the room. But what really caught Tifa's attention was that in the middle of the room, there was a wooden table and two chairs. In the chair facing the door, staring at her without sunglasses on, was Rude.

Tifa heard the door shut behind her, locking her in the room with the man who kidnapped her. The man who she once considered a dear friend and a lover. Her enemy.

She swallowed, moving forward and sitting in the chair across from Rude. She folded her hands on the table in front of her, forcing herself to remain calm and composed on the outside as she and Rude stared at each other. "Tell me how you knew where I was when I was being held in Coasta Del Sol," she said, forcing herself to start a formal interrogation.

"You don't care about that," Rude replied smoothly, seeing through Tifa's act to remain composed. "You don't care about any of the questions that you're 'supposed' to ask me. Why don't you ask me the ones that you're really wondering about, hm?"

Snake, Tifa thought bitterly, glaring at him. "You showed up at a convenient time, saving me less than a day after I was taken to Coasta Del Sol," Tifa said, ignoring Rude's comment and continuing with the planned questions. "How did you know when Kadaj was going to take me there?"

"Ignore me, why don't you? Lovely, you don't care about any of this. Tell me what you're really thinking?"

"Were you connected to Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo?" she asked stiffly.

"That's not a very polite tone to-"

"Shut up, Rude!" Tifa snapped, rising up out of her seat and slamming her hands down on the table in front of her. "You shut up and tell me what I want to know. Were you responsible for my initial kidnapping?"

Rude stared at her for a few moments in silence, seeing her seethe before he answered her. "Now we're getting somewhere."

She glared at him, jaw locked and emotion starting to appear in her eyes. She couldn't restrain herself any longer, not in the presence of this pig. "Why did you do this?"

"Because your heart led you astray!" Rude snapped in return. "I cared for you. I treated you well. But the moment Strife returned, you ran into his arms!"

"I told you I didn't love you romantically," Tifa whispered in sadness. "Why couldn't you accept that I loved you as a friend?"

"Because if you let me, I would have treated you much better than Strife ever could!" Rude said. "You just don't get it, do you? He's a selfish, cocky, wanna-be hero. "

"And you're not selfish?" Tifa snapped in return. "You kidnapped me for your own selfish reasons. You took me away from my family. You nearly had me killed in the process. Kadaj poisoned me! Don't you see the harm you've done?"

"Strife'll do much worse to you!" he retorted in anger. "When as he been there for you in the past? How often has he held you when you cried? How often has he-"

"Stop it!"

Rude finally fell silent at Tifa's outburst, and at the moisture that was present in her eyes. Tifa glared at him through teary eyes, betrayal in her facial expression. She had it. She thought she once loved this man, at least for a little while. She considered him to be a friend even after she broke his heart. Was that her fault? Was she too naïve?

"Listen to me," she finally said, her voice softening again. "You don't know him, and you don't know me."

"I don't know you?" Rude repeated, his tone hard and mocking. "I stalked you my entire adult life. I know you better than you know yourself. I know what you need better than you do. You're just too stubborn to admit it."

"I'm too stubborn?" she said in shock. "You're the one too stubborn to see that you're wrong! You can't know me better than I know myself. You've seen me from a distance, which is creepy, by the way. You don't know what goes on in my head."

"…"

"And you never will know," Tifa said softly, turning and starting for the door. She was close to her breaking point with Rude pushing her buttons and making her feel like the bad guy. It was time for her to leave, compose herself, and let somebody else do this interview. Cloud was right; this was a bad idea.

Rude waited until Tifa set a hand on the handle of the door before he spoke. "I told them to bring you to Coasta Del Sol."

"Pardon?" she asked, keeping her back to him. What was he referring to?

"Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo. I told them to bring you to Coasta Del Sol after a few days in case Strife found you."

"So you were working with them," Tifa assumed, turning around to face Rude.

"I resurrected them," he responded, shocking Tifa. He saw her expression, which basically asked how he possibly did that, so he decided he would keep explaining. "They were imperfect replicas who believed they were resurrected to recreate Sephiroth. They were really puppets of mine, meant to take you away from your friends so I could be your hero and rescue you."

"You told them to poison me?" she hissed in disbelief.

"Sure," he said with a shrug. "If I didn't give them something to do, then they would have done something worse. They would have just gone out to kill everyone."

"But you killed them," she said. "How would you do that? If they believed they were really alive for Sephiroth's sake, they wouldn't have died easily."

"Elementary, my dear," he said with a slight smirk. "I put a drug in their systems when they were first recreated. When I triggered the capsules to open in their systems, it was almost instant death. Of course, I came in and shot my gun at the same time so the rescue would look convincing."

"…You monster," Tifa whispered. He worked this all out with her kidnapping. "Why did you bring Marlene into this? Why didn't you just have them take me? Why would you do something so sick and twisted in the first place?"

"Why?" Rude asked, rising up from his seat, the chains on his hands and legs letting him stand in that place. "Because, like you said, I'm a monster."

Tifa had it at that. She thought she already was close to snapping, but now there was no doubt that he was at her last straw. She turned the handle of the door and exited the room quickly, seeing her friends all standing by the window and looking at her with startled eyes. She ignored them. She turned on her feet and at first walked down the hall, and then ran.

She had faced many things in her life, but this was one thing that she couldn't face right now. The betrayal sank too deep; she was too emotionally attached still. She thought she was strong enough to face this; she believed that she could face anything that was set in front of her. But she was wrong.

And so, her world came crumbling down again more quickly than she could have predicted.