Chapter 17: One step forward, Two steps back.
She awoke early most mornings. Finding she was idle and yet possessed a whole-hearted desire not to stagnate in her cliff top house, she started running. She would wake, dress according to the weather, and put in her earphones with the music on maximum volume. She established a route, looping down the path into the village and back toward the beach, rather than tackle the steep stair set in the Cliffside.
She hadn't found any other activity in the form of exercise since she had left Wutai to keep up her fitness, though she vowed to herself she would never let herself decline as low as she had been in Kalm.
She sometimes saw Greg, when their respective walking times coincided. She would smile apologetically, slightly embarrassed when recalling her behaviour upon their first meeting. Sometimes, she thought he might have wanted speak; his gaze would meet hers, or he would raise his hand in greeting, even take a step towards her. But she would block him out, and continue on in the opposite direction.
She ran barefoot, leaving her shoes on the rocks at the sea wall; sometimes she ran along the dry sand, sometimes along the water's edge. When she reached the end of the bay, breaths coming rapid and laboured, she would perch on a rock to rest, feet dangling idly in the cool water.
There, she would sit and think, considering scenario after scenario after scenario. But nothing seemed to add up. What was she doing here? Shouldn't she be out looking for him? Would that be what it took?—and if she did go, then what would she find; A Vincent who was hesitant, indecisive, closed, though still happy to see her. Maybe he had made up his mind that he didn't want anything to do with her, and that running away from it had been the easiest, most selfish option.
There was no route that stood out as being the easy one, nor the obvious, least complicated; least likely to hurt either of them. So instead, she chose not to act. Some days brought with them fresh paranoia, others new hope, some even rage. At its worst, she felt nothing but despair.
It was on one of these days that she passed Greg again, on the return leg of her morning run. It was earlier than usual; she had been unable to sleep at all, and so the sun was just cresting the hills behind her when her feet touched the frigid sands, the tide having only recently retreated.
"You're up early." He greeted her with warmth. She suppressed a wave of guilt.
"I couldn't sleep." She found herself saying. She became conscious of her sweat, glistening on her forehead, dark triangles marking her shirt. And in her attempt to hide her discomfort, she noticed the absence of Greg's usual hairy companion.
"Where is Sasha?" She inquired, glancing along the length of the beach, the show of curiosity serving to mask her discomfort.
"She… was still asleep when I went out. I just felt like I had to come to the beach…" She met his gaze, aware of the sparkle in his beautiful irises. It woke a raging defiance within her.
"You might have run into me." She ventured, stepping a little closer towards him. His breath rose in a light mist before his face, though it did little to mask his surprise at her proximity.
"I always hope to see you again…" He whispered. "But you always never seem to notice me… You were the beautiful girl with the sad eyes, and the lost earring… I never caught your name." His cheeks were flushed, and her heart swelled at his words, life returning to the overworked muscle at last. It warmed her from within, to feel wanted, desired even. It was a shame that she couldn't see the damage that was about to be done.
"My name is Tifa." She outstretched her hand, and he took it. She discovered she wasn't the only one, who was trying to hide their sweat.
She didn't know why she had asked him to come; trying to think of any one particular reason was like chasing leaves in the wind. Each time she thought she had figured it out, the reason was whisked away from her by the ever-consistent tumult of her thoughts.
She was aware of his silent gaze on her back as she shut her front door, all too sensitive to the fact of how interested her eyes were when he removed his coat in her hallway. The thick silence amplified the tension that had been allowed to settle between them. There was no breeze, no raging sea that could offer a gentle background hum, something to fill the void of quiet. And as he turned to face her, she knew. She knew what she was going to do.
And she would regret it later.
Her mind went blank as she became pressed against her kitchen wall, his hands slipping up her shirt, skimming sweat-cooled skin. He undressed her quickly, and skilfully. His hands caressed her skin, leaving her breathless and unable to resist his wandering fingertips. Then she fell against him, begging him silently to give her what they had both been waiting for.
Sex was a strange thing, she recalled thinking; it was almost too easy to push everything else aside and give over to the chemical reactions firing from synapses in her brain, conducting her body like an orchestra. She was no more in control of it than she was of the sea outside.
Nothing was as easy afterwards though; awkward silences and shyness that had long been discarded, returning with abandon.
She sobbed a little to herself, though he took it as a moan of pleasure, pressing harder against her. It felt good to give in, she thought, good to simply acknowledge attraction, and act upon it. Such a simple act, and yet it had meant everything with him.
All too quickly, it was over. She cried her release into his hair, gripping it between her fingers, her thighs trembling around his waist, her spine tingling at the cold of the wall at her back. He let her down gently, though she stayed close, leaning into his arms in an awkward embrace with no true feeling, before he pulled away.
"Are you alright?" He asked, brushing a strand of hair away from her cheek, a tender action that she had not expected. And she knew she was going to cry.
"I'm sorry…" She whispered, voice thick with tears. "I shouldn't have…"
"Tifa, I know there is someone else." He rebuttoned his pants, and she watched him, reaching for her clothes, suddenly ashamed. She was weak, taking advantage of the fact that someone wanted her; trying to smother her memories, because they were trying to choke her.
Then were both dressed once more, stood in her hallway. It all felt so wrong.
"Please go." She whispered, her voice faltering. He nodded slowly. She averted her face and closed her eyes; the snap of the door closing sent a sudden blast of cool air inside.
Tifa stumbled into the kitchen and vomited violently into the sink, hands shaking as she gripped the edge of the worktop.
Would it have been the same with Vincent, had he stayed?
Was that why he had chosen to leave, before she had woken, afraid to face the silence; Terrified to acknowledge the truth, choosing to run rather than to confront her.
She suddenly longed for the old days of doubt, and discomfort. Then, she'd had Vincent to herself. Since those days, she had crossed the final barrier, jumped over the line that he had drawn. She had driven him away. He had finally opened up to her, told her his fears of losing her, yet as obvious as it seemed, she couldn't fathom what he truly meant. He had left: she had not been lost.
She had offered herself to him, and like the fruit of temptation from which before he had taken a few reluctant bites, he had devoured her completely, waking to find a bitter after-taste in his mouth.
In the bath, she had scrubbed hard at her skin, as if trying to erase any impressions of Gregg's fingertips, to remove the phantom sensation of his lips on her body. She was consumed by guilt, rage, and disgust. Her reflection seemed to judge her somehow, as she scrutinised it that night. Her skin seemed to crawl, still marred by his touch.
Yet she pitied him. It wasn't his fault, or his problem. It had been her decision, to invite him in, with the clear intention of letting him take from her what she was willing to give.
Had that been the case with Vincent? Did he experience the same guilt, the same disgust as she did now? What was it about her that he was running from?
She exhaled onto the glass, raising her fingers to the condensation.
"Why?"She whispered, her breath condensing on the mirror, so she could no longer see her face, that treacherous visage of a woman who seemed to break everything she touched, and ruin any chance at love that passed her by.
She dressed and left the house, with the intention of going to the train station, dialling Shera's number as she walked. The PHS was cool against her cheek as she listened to the dial tone.
"It's Tifa," She said unnecessarily, her breath a fine mist in the air as she spoke. "Would you mind if I came to see you? And if it's not too much trouble, could I stay the night?" She felt like she was being a little rude, though there was no desire within her to stay in that house tonight. It was beginning to seem like a poisoned gift, a Trojan horse, releasing doubt and sin into the rooms.
"Um…." Shera was hesitating, for some reason or another. "Oh, sure, sure, is something wrong?"
"It's… I made a mistake Shera. I slept with Gregg." The words were like acid, blistering her lips and stinging the raw flesh. Saying it out loud ground the salt deeper into the wound.
In the background, she heard a chair scrape back and a door slam, punctuated by a good few curse words courtesy of Cid. The line was still for a moment, before Shera released a steady sigh.
"Tifa… Vincent was just here. We were… trying to talk sense into him… and I think… he heard you."
Tifa's head began to spin, and her hand shook violently.
"Tifa, are you there?" Shera probed after receiving no answer.
"I… I think I'm going to be sick."
-0-
The next few days passed in a haze. She slept restlessly, yet couldn't bring herself to get up before noon. She only forced herself to eat, because she knew what a wreck she would become if she didn't, despite the fact that for the first few days, everything that touched her stomach bounced, and she spent its entirety huddled over in the bathroom, her body convulsing with waves of nausea and cold shivers.
It made her sick in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal, she thought with a sour smirk, that the day she had tried to forget about Vincent was the day he was going to come back.
Wiping her mouth with the back of a shaking hand, she cried hot angry tears, laughing resentfully about how shit everything was turning out. All she had ever done wrong was to wear her heart on her sleeve; her friends had always said she would get hurt, but she never knew it could hurt like this.
Yet there just didn't seem to be any alternative.
There was just no other way that it could be, or at least not that she could see from where she was sitting, slumped against the wall of the bathroom, not daring to stray too far lest the waves of nausea catch her unawares.
She finally found the strength to drift about the house, feeling strangely like a ghost, a shadow behind the windows; if someone should look up at her lonely house, they would see a shell of a woman with hollow eyes staring mournfully back.
She spent hours trying to distract herself; she had dug under her bed for the box of photographs that she had managed to save for all these years. A few rare pictures of her Mother and Father on their wedding day, a few of her old school photos, and some of Avalanche that she hadn't had room for in the picture frames. His presence was in every corner, a darkness made all the more obvious by the presence of so much light; Aries' easy smile, Tifa's doting affectionate glances directed at a certain cerulean-eyed swordsman, more often than not never returned.
She found it sadly amusing that someone like Vincent had somehow wormed his way into her heart, against his will of course. She had never thought she could want something so much. Perhaps that was what was wrong with her; it was all, or nothing. She couldn't give him something, without offering up everything else, too.
It was only a day later, when food was agreeing with her once more, that she realised she felt exactly as she had done on the day of Cloud's funeral. Empty, without purpose, lost… the list could go on, and on.
-0-
The phone was ringing. The shrill peal was enough to make her wince, shattering the silence of her house so rudely.
She managed somehow to make it downstairs to reach the phone. The old fashioned receiver was heavy and solid in her fragile fingers. "Hello?"
"Tifa! Where have you been?" Shera's frantic voice accosted her ear.
"My head's been stuck in the toilet bowl pretty much all week."
"…All week? Tifa…" The engineer's voice was suffused with dread, enough to set a cold chill in her own stomach.
"What is it?"
"Tifa, could you be… pregnant?"
She hadn't even considered the possibility that her sickness could be the by-product of something like that, and she was instantly bombarded by turbulent, intrusive notions. Could it be Vincent's? Was it too late to be his—could her one encounter with Gregg have been enough?
The dates became distorted in her head.
New Year was… three, four weeks ago? Greg was… no it couldn't be either, surely?
What would she do if it was?
She confronted herself with images of herself as a lonely mother, with a child who asked questions about a father that had never been there; A child with eyes unlike her own, who was tall for their age... A child with long hair the colour of a raven's wing.
"…Tifa…." The receiver dangling from the wall crackled her name, bringing her back to her senses. She fumbled for it with trembling hands and pressed it to her ear.
"Shera what am I going to do?"
"Well, first things first. Do a test. Don't panic Tifa. We can solve this. I will be there in an hour, don't move anywhere; I'll bring a test. You won't go through this alone, you hear me?"
Shera arrived promptly, true to her word, wearing a grave expression and carrying with her an ominous blue bag. Tifa found herself giggling in spite of it all; how ridiculous, a woman of her age getting herself into this situation.
A few minutes later found them both stood silently in the kitchen while Shera made some tea, simply for something to occupy her hands with. She knew neither of them would drink it. The plastic stick which held Tifa's life in the balance sat face down on the table. Tifa found herself casting wary glances in its direction, as though expecting it to explode.
Two minutes dragged; to Tifa it seemed as though there had never been a longer set of 120 seconds in her life. She turned the test over and, after taking in the formation of lines on the display, let barely held back tears fall onto her frigid cheeks.
-0-
Honestly I had played around with taking out the whole Gregg-encounter, but I think the reason it works so well is that it I haven't chosen to paint Tifa as some squeaky-clean heroine, who is just love-sick. It's much more complicated than that.
I got stuck on this for that very reason, but I got past it! Enjoy.