Glimpses of Normalcy

"Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us."

David Richo

Even now, I found Sephiroth beautiful. Perhaps in a more cadaverous sort of way. All vestiges of the dark angel that weepy, romantic housewives threw on him in their deranged letters to the Junon Ladies' Journal just rang too cliché. If anything, I was bored with clichés. I was bored with angels, would-be gods, and people's heroes. I wanted to rank him with that list but never could. His face was all soft, almost womanly curves with full dark lashes that should have contrasted with the silvery waist-length hair, but he was a cohesive vision of engineered perfection. More animal than man, he loped with a certain grace. Just like a wolf. Predatory. It was sickening. I wanted to quash those furtive thoughts, those last embers of desire that welled up from a more craven place than my heart. I couldn't do anything but stare. Damn it. I wanted to see that immaculate body hunched over a toilet, drunkenly vomiting like one of my regulars at my bar. I wanted to see him tear through a rare steak with slit-eyed animal rapture. I wanted to know that he had to shit— that the glorious Sephiroth felt the same call to nature like us all. I wanted. I didn't dare finish that thought. The full rich bow of his lips. Those fine long and deft fingers. Damn it.

I dutifully trekked through the trails leading up to the reactor. A high pale moon hung in the bloody dawn sky, and despite the wind, all lay silent. It was unnerving how the mountains felt just before daybreak. Give me a birdsong, a howl… something. I felt stupid. What was I supposed to do or say? Vincent sent me off to save souls. Hell, I could hardly save myself. A walk that I knew took nearly two hours along narrow paths felt like ten minutes. The reactor loomed up and looked more rusted than usual. Before it, I felt mortal. Behind the threshold and in the main chamber, I felt small. There he lay resting in a frayed, threadbare sleeping bag. He eyed me blearily with a sleepy annoyance. I grunted and eased up to toe him with my boot.

"Vincent sent me here…to talk," my voice quivered then cracked. I snorted with derision for myself.

Mechanically, Sephiroth pushed back the sleeping bag and pulled himself into a sitting position. He motioned for me to do the same. Next to him of course. I sat and drank in his waking form. His hair was matted, and his eyes were ringed blue. I sniffed. He wasn't exactly mountain fresh either.

He half mumbled, half yawned, "So?"

"So," I echoed.

"We can't go on like this, Tifa."

My eyes widened, "Like what?"

"I'm tired," Sephiroth whispered.

"I don't understand," I shrugged.

We speak two different languages. I want to say this but don't. He wouldn't know what I meant, and we'd just lapse into another of our usual silences. I don't understand. I don't know what to do or say. I want to leave so desperately because he is becoming with every passing moment all the more a mere man in my eyes. This is not a plummet from grace.

"I am tired of skirting around you, them, Vincent. Everything," his last word rings out as a sonorous echo and hangs in the stale air of the reactor. He shuffled uncomfortably next to me as if his skin were too much to bear, the simple weight of living.
"I want to hate you so badly," I hear myself weakly whimper, "I want to keep blaming you, but I can't." Whose words are these, and where did Tifa Lockheart go? I am dying for air but reach out for his hand. Those fine callused fingers consume my small glove.

His baritone devours my breath, "What happens now?"

We cannot live happily ever even if I somehow discover forgiveness along the way. The rules just are not written that way. You cannot commit genocide three times over and expect the world to turn the page. Yet…to prolong this moment, I am willing to say anything.

"I don't know, but you cannot keep living here."

In this place, at this moment I am drenched with my own sweat, and though, I have no mirror I can see myself clearly here with Sephiroth. I am Cat's worn down bear. Skin sagging from the bone, my hair clings to my flesh but still feels like wild straw. Thin and ill, my once full cheeks lay sallow with all the appeal of a sickly, sucked-in lemon. Let me tell you now that I did have my little stolen moments of vanity. While Cloud was obsessing over finally being able to play the hero, I reveled in being the smokey-eyed vixen. So much for yesteryear. I am my own photo negative.

"I can't keep living like this," Sephiroth voices my thoughts, and as I look towards him and really see him, he is a shrunken little boy. He mutters on, "I can't live with you. With anyone. Anywhere."

"Just forget it, Sephiroth," I sigh, "Just come to my place tonight. We'll eat a good steak, drink a good bottle of wine, and forget the world tonight." I cannot believe my own words, but I keep saying them. I mutter stupid, little soothing things, motherly nothings in the void of the reactor. I dream of a little cabin nestled away further in the heart of the mountains. I see Sephiroth there in his painfully romantic life of solitude, and I know I am already a fool for thinking these things. He knows it too. I cannot stop.

"What is it about you?" Sephiroth murmurs aloud to empty air.

I shrug and pull myself to my feet. I need to leave. I have been here a little too long, and the bearish bravado that I displayed earlier is starting to get to me. I cannot do this again.

"Some days, Sephiroth," I whisper, "I feel like a mountain wolf. I might just spring up and leap away in the winter air of the mountainside."

I leave him there and stalk back down the path to my home. There is something unsettling about the feel of Old Town, and the world feels like its shrinking in on me. All the more damning, the image of that little cottage nestled among tall firs wells up in my mind. I dream of snow-capped peaks and rushing rivers thick with chunks of ice. Instead of going back to my cold and impersonal house and feeling its emptiness creep down and undo me, I walk to the new side of Nibelheim.

Alpine commercialism assaults the lay of the land. Everything is a manufactured copy of a copy of a copy. Even the pine and mountain flavored freshness of the air tastes artificial. I watch the quiet early risers among the tourists make their way through the streets. No one really lives here. Everyone is permanently on vacation, and I am just another tourist looking in on a forbidden world. I belong nowhere to no one. As I pace through the streets past bright souvenir shops and cheap diners that promise the best of Nibelheim's goodness, I keep thinking of Sephiroth. Then my thoughts wander to tonight's dinner, and I find myself in front of a grocery store.

Back in Costa del Sol, I used to enjoy the little domestic things like grocery shopping. I buffed my faucets and shined my windows until they were pristine crystal. I kept a little garden in front of my villa and loved the gritty feel of soil underneath my fingernails. I savored picking between fat, purple eggplants from the best of the bunch, and hell, I even looked forward to cleaning my stained toilet when I got in the house at the night. It was so relieving that I could chop vegetables up on a cutting board that I'd grown myself or read the latest bestseller on the porch at night with an expensive brandy. No one was shooting at me, and I wasn't risking my life every other moment. When did that stop being enough?

I push an empty cart between the aisles and look down one towards produce and down another at pampers. More than a steak, I want to chop wood and hunt. Sacrificing one life for another, I want to pounce away on these sticks for legs, and someday, I just might.

The store is fairly empty and no one even looks at me anymore. I am anonymous. I suppose I hardly look the part of the famous martial artist from the papers these days. In yesterday's issue, I was just a footnote. Today, no mention. I shuffle through the line, head low, and check myself out at the self-service register. Two thick, bloody rib-eye steaks, a marked down bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, two yellow onions, one carton of mushrooms, some nondescript vanilla ice-cream, and a prepackaged chocolate cake. I am a horrible baker, and maybe he has a sweet tooth.

With a bag full of perishables, I have no choice but to go back home. The steaks and mushrooms look so spare on the bare shelves in the refrigerator. The only other frigid neighbor is a half-used bottle of ketchup with crunchy layer of hardened residue on the lid. I toss it out and then sit quietly in my living room on my old lumpy sofa. I lean back in the cool gloom in my house and pray for a distraction. I suppose I know a bit how he feels now. Time never really moves. Everything is static loneliness, an endless waiting for each day to end until you simply stop moving. I stopped living the moment I came here. I strain to listen for a faint tap at my back window to feel the ruffling breeze of my curtains because he's invaded my home once again. Nothing. I cannot tell you the moment he became another chair or picture frame in the background of my life. More furniture that makes up my world. He is something more and without him, I am simply spending time watching everything trickle away like sand.

A knock at the door, and I spring to my feet. Way to be eager, Tifa, I berate myself silently. I open the door and see Vincent. I shouldn't be too surprised. It is way too risky for Sephiroth to come down here during the day. Vincent eyes me wearily, and I step to the side and wave him in.

"I'll make us some tea. Make yourself at home," I mutter and scurry off to the kitchen.
"That would be nice," he retorts distractedly.

A few minutes pass, and I return to my sitting room with clattering china and a cheap half-eaten package of cookies.

"Sorry for the fare. I thrive on pre-made, half-frozen everything. I haven't felt up to cooking much since I moved here," I wave over the paltry slim pickings in an attempt to play the role of the gracious, simpering hostess. That falls flat. Dinner parties and midmorning teas are just not my game.

"How are things?" Vincent asks. He is far too polite to interrogate me like he would do with anyone else. I know that he wants to know about the talk with Sephiroth.

I wonder how much I should really tell him. I have to say something. I blurt out, "I am having dinner with Sephiroth tonight."

"This is new," He quirks one wispy dark brow. I wonder why I haven't seen it before. Father and son mirror each other so well. If Sephiroth's hair were dark, he would be all the more Vincent's son. He says nothing as if he wants an explanation.

I've got nothing and grasp at straws, "It is something new. We talked for awhile, and I just invited him down. I can't keep being hostile to him. We will have to work something out eventually."

Vincent rewards with me one his rare, signature smiles. A faint crook of those lovely and strangely familiar lips. He dips a hard cookie square into the amber wells of my cheap cup and takes a bite once it is nearly mush. He appeared thoughtful for a moment staring down in the swishing dark brew of his teacup and then spoke, "I suppose this is all for the best."

"It is?" I murmur at his easy acceptance for whatever I share with Sephiroth. I wouldn't call him protective, but he is cautious and maybe rightfully so in matters that pertain to his son. He inhales sharply, and I can see that he is holding something back from me, "If you have something to say, Vincent, then say it. I can't handle you tiptoeing around me either." That came out far harsher than I intended, and I now became keenly aware of how the clattering china in my hand shook ever so slightly.

He lets out a long and decidedly frustrated sigh, "I of all people have no right to judge you here. As one of the women that I respect most, I want nothing but you restored to the way you were. Whole. Healthy. Happy. If this is the way to do it, then you have my blessings. Maybe this is evolution…or closure."

Color me stunned. I can feel the heat of my cheeks as I stare at his rising form. I can't let him leave me like this, "Vincent…I"

He shakes his head, "No. Don't say anything. You don't have to…I already know."

My front door creaks ajar, and as quietly as he came, Vincent is gone. I collect our cups and saucers and wash them idly in my cubbyhole of a kitchen. My sudsy, pruned fingertips work out of sync with my roving thoughts. The oppressive air in this house feels lighter, and the grayness of my life feels as if it has taken on an array of colors for which I have no words, but still I am dogged by the reverie of that alpine cabin as pretty as the inside of a snow globe. I see myself leant against snow covered firs even older than Nibelheim, and I am not alone. A confusing heat in my chest pushes me back into reality as I find myself before my stove. The downright predatory aroma of blood simmering away from steaks on the rusted stovetop assaults the air, and I can feel my heart racing as if I were on the hunt. I could just leap away in this moment, climb through my window, and run off into the horizon for that alpine retreat.

I place a palm against my bosom. This is so very, very wrong. Vincent can't be right. I can't feel this way about anyone, especially him. Especially him, my mind echoes again and again as if in prayer. Off in the distant backrooms of the house, a window opens. I know it's him. He stalks against the age-softened wood of my floorboards with a leopard's grace and stands beneath the archway between the den and kitchen.

"I am early," the low timbre of his voice seizes the room, and he still carries that otherworldly aura which I have come to despise lovingly. This morning, I saw a man, and now here looms the specter that may as well had risen up from beneath my floorboards. For me, Sephiroth is always half here and half somewhere else. He should have been dead, but I need him to be real. He has to be real…as he is now. I have to know, to touch. My hand is on his chest, and I am across the room halfway not really caring how I've gotten there. A distant thought from my brain assures that surely my feet have borne me here, but my soul doesn't know it yet.

"What are…?" I swallow his words with my lips. He tastes of the fire that I remember from those eight long years that have passed, and his finely haired skin smells of burning timber. Suddenly, his hands grasp at the small of my back, and through his shock, I feel him return my kiss with all of the intensity of a dying man. It isn't until smoke fills the air that we let go of each other, gasp for air, and return to ourselves. He is noticeably stiff, and I feel almost nauseous with the char of the meat in the small room.

"Well, so much for dinner," Sephiroth says between almost undetectable pants. Everything in the kitchen is smaller and dimmer save for the brightness of his wide, catlike eyes. I think that I surprised him, and I surprised myself as well.

"Wow," I stammer aloud, and I repeat myself more faintly, "…wow". I lie backwards against the sharp steel edge of my sink and listen to soft bubble and hiss of the stove. Come on. Say something. Anything. I toy with playfulness, but the timing is off and leaves my voice practically mechanic, "Well, I do have chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream." I lick my lips as I watch Sephiroth shuffle his feet across the room. This is awkward. Why is my heart sinking?

He suddenly looks up at me intently, deeply as if he is trying to see inside of me, "I'll take you up on the offer."

Dinner becomes dessert, and we're in my den on my old, patchy sofa with two cups of an incredibly bitter coffee and my confectionary purchases from the day. A lone light bulb hangs from the ceiling and illuminates the room with a flickering hesitance. The opposite of romantic candlelight, this feels like the buzzing lamp of a basement drug den. Only the exposed pipes and makeshift lab are missing. We haven't said much since that moment. Somehow, I feel we will not ever say much.

"Tifa, I am sorry," Sephiroth apologizes suddenly and unexpectedly between mouthfuls of cake. I glance over at his crumb-flecked visage and feel a small hurt well up in my chest. Surely while a little wet and imprecise, the kiss couldn't have been that bad. He shakes his head suddenly catching my eyes, "Not about that. About before."

Oh. That before. My memories seize me and thrust me into the Nibelheim of my memory, and just as quickly as they arose, they fade. His apology is a little more earnest this time, and I feel it wash over me as viscous and warm as melted caramel.

"I know," I reply with a dull fondness for him, "I think that I have always known. I just wasn't ready then. You know, to really forgive…" He cuts me off with the rich cocoa and vanilla bean of his lips, and I can feel the heat and urgency of his need for someone, anyone behind his kiss. He pulls away before this can progress into something that cannot be taken back.

"I don't want this…us to be like back then either."

My eyes widen. I don't have to ask him what he means or wants. I just know. Like Vincent said, this is new, incredibly new. The room shrinks and fades before my eyes, and the sweets lay abandoned on my rude coffee table like forgotten refuse. I feel the pitter patter of my heart as it leaps wildly from my chest. When did the last vestiges of my hate pass away? Last month? Last week? This morning in the reactor?

Here Sephiroth sat so very warm and so very near my body, and I am all the more aware his mortality as I drink in the hope etched onto his fine features. The alabaster paleness of his flesh, the soft, shapely rosiness of his lips, and the point of his nose have never been more appealing. I thought that I would have always gone for a more conventionally masculine man like Cloud — someone more overtly muscular and compact, but I have never wanted someone more than I could want Sephiroth then or now. The guilt that I didn't even know I felt wells up and passes as quickly. All of that is inconsequential when compared to this very second.

His larger hand captures my icy, sweat slick fingers and tugs me lightly to my feet. We glide up the stairs almost as if we were dancing to my bed. I tug one sock free from my foot with the other, and his plain tee lands somewhere in the room. We both end up entwined and as nude as the day we were born all the same, and an uncountable length of time passes before we both fall back on my frameless mattresses spent and breathing softly. A secondhand sheet halfway drapes his sinewy frame, and Sephiroth reminds me all the more of one of those soft, reclining male nudes from centuries old paintings. A certain boyhood naiveté hides beneath the darkness of his aura. I lie in the crook of his arm and savor his simple green maleness. This was unavoidable. Somehow, I always knew that we would go full circle and end up back at the start, but something is different. He is a little older and somewhat more gaunt, and I. I am…

"You're beautiful," he says aloud in hush more to the air than to me, "I always thought you were beautiful even then." My youth and the circumstances of our first meeting are left unsaid, but then he says something which astounds me, "I have spent the last few months wondering what drove me to you eight years ago. You were my last link to humanity, Ms. Lockheart." The slight formality feels silly now considering all that has happened between us.

I say nothing as the evenness of his breath lulls me to sleep. I only tighten my embrace and pull myself closer to his lithe form. It's the rain that wakes me at dawn. It falls as a soft, autumnal godsend for the last harvests off in the pastureland further from the damned crater of Old Town, and I am on my feet staring through the bathroom window and watching the mist rise from the red and gold of the mountains. I can almost feel the few broken deer herds as they thunder through the dying forests from my room.

My arms and legs are both sore, and in the mirror I can see the half-formed redness of bruises along the muscles of my stomach and hips. At the back of my mind, I expected to feel awful about this the next day, but I just feel oddly fulfilled. This isn't resignation. It's something else. This ramshackle home now feels too small for me, and the man, Sephiroth, my newfound love — he cannot continue staying in that awful place that holds so many terrible memories for us in the mountains.

He groans softly from my room, and I return. He looks so spare on the mattress in the middle of the floor. A single cheap lamp sat plugged in a half-broken socket on one corner of the room. I own so few things. What's to stop me from giving it all up? Sephiroth yawns and stretches, his bones creaking all the while. He pulls himself to sit before me cross-legged. His lips are pursed with his usual morning grumpiness, and I fondly caress the pale stubble of his cheek.

"I thought that I had been dreaming last night," he murmurs.

I laugh with far less restraint than I've felt over these last few years, "I promise you that last night was definitely not a dream." I cannot say where we will go from here, but these are newer, better days. I have finally found something, someone to hold onto and call mine in this world, and this time, I will not surrender it for wanderlust or dreams of glory.

A/N: It has been a couple years since I've come back to this story and to this fandom, and this was one of my more favored fanfictions. I just want to give this story the ending that I think it deserves. Thank you all kindly sticking with this story and for your reviews and favorites. The next chapter will be the epilogue, and as always, thank you all for reading!