CHAPTER 34: FACING THE DARK

The door to the workshop flew open and crashed against the wall with a bang. Startled, Brian dropped the sheet of sandpaper he had been holding as he looked toward the sound of rushing feet on the cellar steps. Tifa flew in like a demon, clutching a pile of envelopes to her chest. Her black mass of hair flowed behind her like the stroke of an ink brush. He had taken a heavy dose of laudanum to ease the ache of his healing femur that the rain had brought on. Sluggish and drowsy, he was slow to react as his daughter raced toward him like a dark streak of lightening.

"You!" she roared, whipping a thick white envelope at his head. Dumbfounded by the atypical display of anger from his normally passive child, Brian was frozen in his place as he let the projectile hit him in the chin.

"What have you done?!" Tifa shrieked, throwing one envelope at a time. "How could you? How could you?"

Like his late wife, Tifa had soft, sloping eyes that were the color of comfort and warmth. But for the first time, Brian saw fire smoldering in the depths of her irises and his foggy mind scrambled to form words to address this fury.

"Why? Why do you hate him? Why do you hate me?" Another envelope bounced off his neck and with a great heave of her arms, she threw the rest to the dusty floorboards at his feet.

Snapping out of his temporary paralysis, Brian grit his teeth and grabbed Tifa's wrists. There was no fear in her face when she met his fiery gaze. The defiance in her features made him snarl and he pressed forward with all his weight.

"Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?" Brian growled, squeezing her wrists until they turned white. "You little savage! This is what I get for letting you run wild!"

Tifa tightened her hands into hard fists.

"Yes, I do! I know exactly who I'm taking to—a selfish man who has forgotten his daughter! All this time you've been so wrapped up in your own misery that you've been blind to mine!" Her breaths came in short puffs and her tongue stumbled over her spitfire. For years, she had bottled up her sorrow and sealed her mouth from saying what was in her heart. Enduring life with such pent up pain felt much like bowing her head in the fierce winds of a winter storm. Now that she had begun to release the turbid thoughts inside her, she couldn't stop. The truth surged forward like a raging river. "Don't you think I miss Mama, too? I've tried so hard to take care of you and the house and make you as happy as she did. But I've never been good enough, have I?"

Tifa's eyes burned, but she did not cry. She stared, unwavering, at her father's face. His breath was heavy with the scent of his medicine and there were tiny flecks of wood dust in the short stubble of his beard. The wrinkles at the corners of the man's eyes deepened as his brows drew close together. Contempt swam in his gaze but she didn't look away; she wasn't afraid anymore. There wasn't much left to lose between them.

"You may look like Lia, but you'll never be who she was!"

It was a low blow and he knew it. Papa had spit this particular venom at her before, knowing how much it ate at the aching wounds of her heart. Of course it was impossible for her to do anything but fall short of Mama's perfection, but she had hoped that she could reflect even a small amount of thelight that her mother had brought into people's lives. Papa was right: she couldn't help anyone. All the kind medicine in the world wouldn't help if everything else she did was wrong. Frustration burst like fireworks in her chest.

"Shut up!"

"If anything, you've disgraced her! You've neglected your duty to be a proper young woman to pursue unorthodox hobbies and a bastard child!"

Papa pushed against her as his sharp words splintered through the air. Zangan had taught her that the size of an opponent meant very little, and Tifa wasn't afraid of her father's towering figure. Fighting monsters three times her size had bolstered her confidence. Her father was slow, injured and unskilled in hand to hand combat—intimidation was his only attack.

"Stop it!"

Brian's bitter laugh made her throat constrict. "You're a failure, like your old man! Why do you think Cloud left you? If he cared so much, he wouldn't have taken off the first chance he got. He went to another continent just to get away from you!"

Rage boiled dangerously in her blood. Tifa clenched her teeth and steadied her feet and as her father continued, shooting him a poisonous look. Center your mind, center your mind, center your mind! They're just words. Her mantra wasn't working and it took all of her strength to cling at her fading sense of control. He shook her by her wrists as his sharp words splintered through the air.

"Tifa, Cloud abandoned you!"

That was it. She couldn't stop it. Like a cobra, she struck in the blink of an eye.

"You abandoned me!" she screeched as she expertly broke free of his grasp and snapped her fist upward to collide with his jaw. Time seemed to slow as Tifa watched her father stumble backwards from the force of impact. Unable to counter the momentum with his healing leg, Brian folded into a heap on the floor.

Tifa's face softened as if the angry sky had broken. The girl stood motionless but for the trembling of her hands; her limbs went numb when she realized what she had done. Shock snuffed out the inferno in her eyes like a candle in the wind. Tifa had broken the cardinal rule of her training. She had vowed to never abuse her power or harm anyone unless in a manner of self-defense. A wave of nausea washed over her as she realized that she had attacked an injured person without any fighting skill—her own father, in fact! Boneless, she sunk to her knees.

"P-papa?" she reached out a shaking hand to try and touch his shoulder. He slapped it away immediately. Crimson eyes watched as Brian shifted to sit upright, cradling the side of his face with his palm.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Tifa voice trembled as she finally broke. Fat, hot tears welled up and spilled over onto her cheeks, flushed from emotion. "I didn't—I just—"

His silence frightened her.

Brian slowly turned his head to regard his daughter, brown eyes rimmed with shock. Her incredible strength and uncharacteristic aggression had left him dumbfounded and speechless. In the years since Lia's death, father and daughter had drawn many borderlines between them, making it possible to dance around sensitive topics and conflict. In the span of a few minutes all of those lines had been crossed, and it was all they could do just to sit there and stare at each other in disbelief. The sight of the purple welt forming on her father's jawline triggered another surge of uncontrollable emotion that she normally kept neatly hidden away inside her. Desperate words, long buried, forced their way out of her mouth like a garment bursting at the seams.

"Please, love me," Tifa begged as she hung her head. "I know it hurts and you're sad. Show me that you'll fight it! I don't want to feel so alone anymore in this house. I need you, Papa. Please…help me."

She counted the tense moments under a sweep of breath, shrinking against the silence that stretched out between them. When her father finally did speak, it brought little comfort.

"Help you? You've dug your own grave, Tifa." Brian said, eerily calm as his gaze met her own. "I told you to stay away from that Strife boy. I told you not to train under Zangan and when you didn't listen, I told you to never let anyone find out."

The volume of his voice was rising with each accusation, anger beginning to boil up within him once again.

"I told you to wear your damn coat that winter Lia died and every time you've defied me! What did you expect to happen to you? Now, neither of us have a future in this place. You've shown me that you think you're too clever and wise to need me or do what I ask!" Brian shakily rose to his feet, favoring his healing leg. "Don't blame me for any of this. You've stolen your own future."

Tifa's dark lashes fell closed against her cheeks as she realized that he was right. She had made all those choices, too young to know how they would dismantle her life before it had really begun. She and Papa were trapped in a self-spun web of despair. She kept trying to escape and forge ahead while he had resigned himself to be consumed by sorrow and loss. It was in that moment that Tifa understood that these wounds would never heal. Her father had chosen to forever wallow in the past and there was nothing she could do to bring him back from his suffering. They had buried his heart years ago in the graveyard up the path when her mother's wooden coffin disappeared into the earth. She couldn't have her Papa back any more than she could have her mother back, for she couldn't have the former without the latter. His refusal to move forward or accept his current reality hindered Tifa's efforts to keep from drowning in regret. Papa's unmoving sadness was like a weight around her ankle, pulling her into the depths. If she could somehow shake herself free of him, maybe she could reach the surface and breathe again. It had been so long since she had felt the freshness of hope like air in her lungs or the warmth of the promise of a bright future.

Picking up his dignity, Brian dusted off his trousers and left his daughter sitting in the dust. Tifa watched him limp up the stairs and couldn't bring herself to move until long after he was out of sight. Dirty envelopes littered the floor around her. Blinking the moisture from her eyelashes, she steadied her breathing and reached out to pick up an envelope marred with Papa's large boot print. Slowly, she broke the seal and opened the flap to pull out Cloud's letter. The first line of the letter made her breath rush out as hope rushed in.

My leave got approved! I'm coming home to Nibelheim! I can't wait to see you, Tifa.
I've got a question that I need you to answer.

… … …

Cloud was exhausted.

In his excitement to get home, he had forgotten how ill-suited his body was to handle travel. He had spent most of the trip across the sea retching as he leaned his blonde head over the ships railing or cradling a bucket as he hid away in the hull. The dizziness and weakness persisted long after he had emptied the contents of his stomach. Even now as he waited on a bench in the harbor's train station, he felt shaky and frail. Taking deep breaths of the early morning air seemed to help. This torture would all be worth it in the end.

Seeing his only family after being gone for well over a year was an exciting thought. Every aspect of his life had been so difficult since he left home that he couldn't wait for the comforting sound of his mother's merry voice. He craved her cooking (though it was still hard to imagine eating anything right now) and her familiar scent of lavender and linen. He missed the sound of the wind through the trees and the feel of soft grass underneath his bare feet. After living in a jungle of concrete, steel and mako, Cloud had learned to appreciate the freshness of nature and the clarity of the mountain air. But most of all, he missed Tifa. The thought of seeing her again after so long was both pleasurable and terrifying.

How much had she changed? How much had he changed? The light press of the tiny velvet box in his pocket felt like a lead weight and it was all he could think about.

It wasn't that he was unsure. In fact, marrying his best friend was the only thing in this life that he was certain that he wanted to do. But what if she had changed her mind about him? Was she angry with him? She hadn't responded to his letters in almost a year—what if she had grown disinterested? It wouldn't surprise him; the circumstances of his life had taught him that he was inadequate. Cloud had been surprised that even after he had escaped to a different continent, the stigma of worthlessness followed him around like a shadow. He had hoped that once he found a new life for himself, he'd be able to show the world that he could make something of himself and be a hero like Sephiroth. In actuality, his venture to join the military had made Cloud realize how mediocre he really was. If Mr. Lockhart hadn't been poisoning Tifa's mind against him, maybe she had finally come to realize he was undesirable.

The ocean breeze rustled his flaxen hair and felt comforting against his cheek. His heavy eyelids threatened to close as the boy rested his head upon his duffel bag. With a sigh, he fought to stay awake.

Tifa would never think that way, right? After all, she was the one to tell him that he had always been someone, back when he was less brave and experienced than he is now. It was really facing her father that he feared the most. Cloud had rehearsed the words a thousand times in his head, trying to predict the inevitable hostility from Mr. Lockhart when it came to marrying Tifa. Would he be enough? An ordinary ShinRA grunt wasn't an impressive sight to behold and wouldn't help him convince the man that he could take care of his daughter.

Cloud had spent the past few weeks weighing his options if Tifa did agree to marry him. He could go back to Midgar for a time and secure a place for them to live before coming back at a later date for their wedding ceremony. That way, Tifa could prepare for her wedding and he could work out the specifics of temporary housing in Midgar and submit a request for permanent transfer to a seaside post. He'd love to save up some more money and take her on a blissful honeymoon before whisking her away to a new, bright future together. It would be difficult on his salary, but they'd make it work.

The sound of a train whistle approaching the station made him flinch awake and he sat upright, stretching and willing his body to get ready to endure another round of motion sickness. Wearily, he made himself stand as the train rolled into the station. With anxiety and excitement fighting for dominance in his chest, Cloud boarded the west-bound train.

… … …

The sun had already dipped below the horizon when Cloud's tired feet finally carried him to the village gates.

He had managed to pay for a ride in an automobile up most of the mountainside. He was surprised to find out that a landside had knocked out the path on the eastern side, knocking out the road that was in the process of being cleared. It was still impassable by automobile, so he ended up walking the remaining four miles to the tiny village of Nibelheim. Candle lit lamp posts cast a dim glow on the cobblestone of the street and summoned nostalgia from parts of his heart that he had seldom visited since his departure from his childhood home. Town square was empty, but a mixture of candle light and electric light dotted the windows of homes and businesses.

Cloud was relieved that there was no one there to see him. After so long, he wasn't sure how the villagers would react to his presence and he was too physically and emotionally exhausted to face any unwanted attention. Had he really only been gone for handfuls of months? It felt like decades since he had lived a lonesome life in is mother's little cottage, free from responsibility for the most part. Now, his days in the iron city were filled with strict schedules, mass produced meals and aching muscles. Cloud had never particularly felt like he belonged in Nibelheim, but he certainly felt out of place now.

These people were so small. They held him down and made him feel inferior, but after seeing more of the world, Cloud finally realized that the residents of this village were nobodies: small people doing small things. They weren't any different than he was. In Midgar, he may have been picked on but wasn't followed around by his stigma. No one cared whether or not you had parents or a rich family or even morals in the big city. The look on Tifa's face the night he had announced he was leaving had made Cloud doubt his decision. Now, it was clear that he wouldn't have had a future if he had stayed. There was nothing for him in Nibelheim.

Quietly, Cloud crept through town square, making sure to stay out of the warm glow of the lamp posts. The rising feelings of insecurity and inadequacy were soothed instantly with the soft sound of a piano as it carried the notes of a melancholy tune into the evening air. Blue eyes came to life and he smiled at the familiarity of the sound. Tifa. Cloud's heart pounded in his chest. The tiny velvet box in his pocket burned constantly in his mind. It bothered him as he swayed on the boat, as the train car rocked him gently to and fro, and as he walked the mountain path. The entire trek westward had been plagued with nervousness and uncertainty regarding this whole marriage thing. Would she say yes? Did she still even care for him? It hadn't been too long, but it had felt like an eternity since he'd last seen her face.

Despite his trepidation, Cloud's feet led him to the Lockhart house. The building looked gloomy against the darkening sky and he tilted his head, recalling what a jovial place it used to be. Memories of spending feverish days sitting at his window seat and studying the immaculately painted white siding and neatly tended lawn bubbled up from the depths of his mind. He used to wish with all his heart that he could join the laugher and music tumbling from Tifa's room as a lonely child, but there was no longer any laughter and he wasn't so helpless anymore. The gentle wind rustled a shingle that dangled from the red roof. White paint peeled from the fence and the yard was unkempt and full of weeds. There was a strange unsettling feeling in his chest as he rounded the side of the house, following the sound of the piano until he was peering up at the open window to Tifa's room.

He could see the thin curtains blowing gently in the spring breeze as candlelight flickered from within. The tune was a familiar one that had comforted him in the hours of loneliness when he was too weak and sick to leave his bedroom. Cloud let out a shaky breath and set his bag on the grass before fishing through it. The familiar press of rounded metal against his palm drew a smile upon his face and with a well-aimed heave, he tossed the jingle bell through her bedroom window. The melody stopped abruptly and Cloud waited there with his heart in his throat. It was this very spot where he had stood after he had let her fall from the bridge, looking up at that same window and wondering if she was alright and if he'd ever speak with her again. It seemed that time didn't change as much as he thought it did. This time, it would be different. He'd save her, if only she'd let him.

Slowly, shyly, Tifa's head appeared in the open window. In the twilight, he could just make out her features. Wide eyes met his blue ones with surprise and relief and Cloud's heart skipped in his chest. The crickets' constant chirping broke the silence that stretched between them. Her eyes grazed over the military uniform he was wearing, taking in the blue garb and the gun holstered at his hip. He kept his voice low, just above a whisper.

"Tifa, I'm back…I'm home."

An enormous smile split her face and she exhaled her relief into the mountain wind. Cloud echoed her expression with a sheepish grin of his own, unsure of what to do with himself under her gaze. With a quiet, happy squeak, Tifa disappeared from the window. In a heartbeat, she flew out the front door and toward his open arms.

"Cloud!"

Her bare feet pounded the earth as Mama's cream colored night gown fluttered behind her. They crashed together in a desperate embrace. She squeezed him as he held her close, her head flush against his chest. Her long hair brushed over his arms like black silk and the press of her breasts against him made his cheeks burn.

"Tifa…" he breathed, her familiar scent whispered comforts to his heart. Unlike the town, she felt like home.

"Oh, how I've missed you!" Tifa gasped into his shirt. She let her hands wander to cradle the back of his neck, running her fingers over the soft, short hair at the base of his head. He looked grown up. He was taller and his shoulders had broadened. She assumed ShinRA had his hair cut and she could feel the hard muscles of his biceps hidden beneath his uniform. Deep voice and inches taller, Cloud was very grown up indeed. The sight of his adult body made her long to be held by him and yearn for his hands on her body. Embarrassed by her own thoughts, shyness finally caught up with her and she released him. Cloud looked different for sure, but those big blue eyes were the same and it comforted her. His awkward smile reassured her that inside, he was still the boy she'd grown up with. Stepping back, she tucked one bare foot around the opposite ankle and looked away, smiling.

"I'm so sorry that I didn't write you back. I thought you –uh, my father…" Nervously, she shook her head before glancing back at the house. "Let's go in the backyard."

Tifa grabbed his hand and led him through the gate and behind the large trunk of the oak tree. The anxiety in Cloud's chest began to melt away as her fingers laced with his. More comforting than the fact that she wasn't mad at him was the fact that he couldn't feel an engagement ring on her finger. He had to try to win her father over; he couldn't wait any longer. Once hidden behind the tree, Tifa sat and urged Cloud to do the same.

"You have no idea how good it feels to see you," Cloud said. "I was worried about you. When you stopped writing, I thought something happened to you."

He sat back and for the first time since his return, he really looked at her. Her body had taken its adult shape and her hair had grown down to the small of her back, but the biggest difference Cloud noticed was her eyes. The warm, wine color of her irises used to sparkle with youth and zest for life, but now they looked tired and sad. Tifa had always been one of the toughest people he had ever known, but he supposed that even a stone could be worn down by enough rain. Cloud hoped that he could chase the shadows out of her eyes with his proposal. The way she was smiling at him made him feel like the hero he'd always wanted to be. Perhaps he could still be a hero, even if he wasn't in SOLDIER.

"My father kept my mail from me," Tifa admitted, gaze fixed on their joined hands. "I thought maybe you'd lost interest in me."

"No, never!" Cloud shook his head. "I made a promise, remember?"

A long time ago, Zangan had taught her the qualities of a trustworthy person and so far, Cloud had met every single one. With so much disappointment concerning her relationships with others and growing nature of distrust, Tifa knew she could lean on Cloud. He had been faithful and loyal to her every day of her life and it was overwhelming to have such a comfort return to her.

"I remember. You always keep your promises."

A lump was forming in her throat but she kept her emotions in check. She closed her eyes as waves of comfort and relief washed over her. Cloud nodded and gulped as the velvet box in his pocket screamed for attention. Steeling himself, he looked her in the eye.

"I will always keep my promises to you. I promise to love and protect you every day of my life, and I never want to feel this way about anyone else. I want to take you away from here and I want you to be happy. Tifa, I never made SOLDIER; not even close. I'm a low level infantry man—nothing special. But if you think that you could be happy with someone like me, then there's something I need to know."

Cloud shifted to reach into his pocket as Tifa looked on, holding her breath.

"Tifa, will you marry me?"

It wasn't a traditional marriage proposal: he wasn't down on one knee and she wasn't in her finest dress. There wasn't a period of supervised courtship or long discussions of approval between parents nor a celebratory supper waiting for them inside. Despite that, nothing had ever felt so right. In his fingers was a tiny open box proudly displaying a beautiful little engagement ring—modest diamond twinkling in the twilight. Her jaw slackened as she stared at the elegant piece of jewelry, the enormity of the moment sinking in. Carmine eyes flicked upward to meet cerulean ones and she watched as his throat convulsed with a nervous swallow. There was nothing but sincerity in his eyes and she felt ashamed for ever doubting that this boy—her best friend—loved her. A smile broke out across her face at the thought of spending the rest of her life with gentle hearted Cloud.

"Yes…" she breathed as her eyes glistened. "Yes, I will!"