Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy VII.

Out Of Suffering, Emerge The Strongest Souls

Chapter Five: A Flaw in the Fabric (Must be Mended)

Tifa swayed and put a hand to her head, grimacing in pain. In addition to dizziness, a searing headache was splitting her temples and her stomach lurched with unwelcome nausea. She put out her hands to steady herself and something cold and soft brushed the bare skin of her wrists.

What…? She blinked and focused on her surroundings despite the pain blurring her vision.

A snowy mountaintop vista met her disbelieving eyes. A smooth blanket of unbroken snow stretched away from her, glittering in the faint light of a gibbous moon in the dark night sky above her. Further away, ridges of rock emerged from the snow like the fin of a shark breaking the surface of the water. They looked black in the weak light, and rose into the peak of the mountain, silhouetted against a backdrop of a billion silvery stars.

Tifa looked down. She was standing in a waist-deep hollow in the snow, the edges of which were jagged in a way that made it look almost as if she had hatched from some kind of bizarre snow-egg. The martial artist looked at her hands and clenched them into fists. That's right…I woke up and I couldn't breathe… She had instinctively broken through the barrier above her head, which had turned out to be a relatively fragile shell of hard-packed ice and snow.

But that doesn't explain how I got here. I was in Edge…Tifa massaged her forehead, trying to think through the throbbing in her temples. And then, slowly, it came back to her.

They had been about to leave Aerith's church, after using it as a meeting place. The only warning they had received was when Cloud and Vincent suddenly stopped simultaneously. She had been on the verge of asking them what was wrong, when suddenly green-white light burst up through the floor of the church, blindingly bright, and the air became thick with the potent scent of mako. The martial artist had squinted against the light, hearing the cries of shock all around her but unable to see her friends and her husband and the children, ohGaiathechildren –

Then the floor had dropped away under her feet and she had fallen down, down, down, through the dark…and was gone.

Tifa shuddered, trying to shake off the feeling of non-existence. Her skin was crawling with it and some distant corner of her brain was wailing hysterically, but getting fainter and fainter as her mind blocked off the memory of what it felt like to momentarily phase out of existence for the sake of her sanity.

Never mind that, pick yourself up, what needs to be done, what's first…the others! The material artist spun on the spot, existential crisis immediately forgotten. Where are they? What happened to them?

Directly behind her lay six other shells of ice, identical to the one she had broken out of. Tifa wasted no time in wading through the snow to the closest one and shattering it with a single punch. A dazed and confused Yuffie Kisaragi looked up at her, Fire materia glowing in her bracer and flames gathering in her palm. "Tifa!" she exclaimed, letting the spell die away. "What the hell is going on? Where are we?"

"That," said Tifa, reaching down and grabbing a hold of Yuffie's hand, "Is an excellent question." She easily pulled the teenager upright and then out of the hollow entirely.

The ninja groaned and doubled over. "Aggh, damnit, my head."

"You too?" Tifa questioned.

"Yeah," Yuffie grumbled. "Got a splitting headache and I feel like I'm gonna hurl. It's like a hangover but I didn't even get to drink anything!"

"Tell me about it." Despite the situation, Tifa felt a smile curve her lips. It was a rare day that the younger woman couldn't lift her mood. "If you're able to move, would you mind giving me a hand? I think the others are trapped under the ice too."

Yuffie nodded, then winced and began to wade to the nearest ice shell, still swearing under her breath. Tifa did the same, although as she did so, she finally took notice of something that had been nagging at her subconscious and a terrible foreboding filled her. There were only five more lumps to break open. But there were eight people left to find.

Please…please. Let there be more than one person in some of these shells.

Tifa drew back her fist but even as she did so, an orange-yellow glow lit the ice from underneath. She leapt back, narrowly avoiding the gout of fire that burst up into the air, melting easily through the ice. An unmistakeable red-furred muzzle poked out of the hole, shortly followed by Nanaki's entire head. He took in Tifa's defensive stance nearly a metre away and his eyes glinted in amusement. "I'm sorry, did I hit you?"

The martial artist raised an eyebrow and smoothed down her clothes. "Nearly. You're lucky I didn't punch you in the face."

A sudden shriek came from the left and they both whipped around to see Yuffie leaning back to avoid the blade of a spear jutting straight up through another of the ice mounds. "Cid! You idiot you nearly stabbed me!" A string of muffled expletives came from under the ice in reply and Yuffie called another Fire spell to her hand, spreading the flames out to cover the dome and melt through it evenly.

Nanaki and Tifa turned back to each other. "Need a hand out?" she offered.

"No need." The lion-wolf leapt up out of the hollow but winced upon landing.

"Headache?" Tifa asked.

Nanaki grimaced. "Nausea too. I take it you're the same?"

The martial artist frowned. "Yes, and Yuffie. It must be a side-effect of…of whatever it was that brought us here."

"Well, judging by what looked like the Lifestream back in Aerith's church, I'd guess the Planet," Nanaki said, tail twitching agitatedly. "The question is why."

"Yeah," Yuffie called over. "Has it never heard of an Exit materia? Way more comfortable way to teleport, and those things aren't exactly fun to use."

"Ain't never heard of an Exit materia with this kind of range, brat." Cid's voice echoed up out of the snowy hollow. A moment later, the pilot's blond head appeared and he hauled himself up out of the hole. "If the Planet, for some reason, has taken it into its head that we needed to be in the middle of fucking nowhere, an Exit isn't going to cut it."

Tuning out the familiar bickering between Cid and Yuffie, Tifa made her way to the next mound, aware that Nanaki was doing the same to her right. Before she could break the ice however, it suddenly shuddered, cracked and then fell apart. Vincent rose from the snow, red eyes scanning his surroundings as he brushed shards of ice from his cloak.

"You okay, Vincent?" Tifa asked. Very little fazed the immortal gunman, of course, but Tifa couldn't quite bring herself to not ask.

"I am mostly well," he replied evenly, stepping gracefully up out of the hollow. "I do, however, have the same symptoms that everyone else seems to be exhibiting."

Tifa frowned. "It must be a side-effect of the teleportation –"

"Hey! Some help over here!" The martial artist and the gunman looked around to find Cid, Yuffie and Nanaki clustered around another hole in the snow. "We can't wake Barret, the big lug," Yuffie said, the scowl on her face belying the worry in her voice.

Between the five of them, they managed to roll the muscular man out of his hollow (mostly thanks to Vincent) and wake him up (mostly thanks to Yuffie). While Barret was still spluttering and roaring complaints about his drenching to the cackling ninja, Tifa waded over to the very last mound in the snow. Her heart was in her throat as she broke the ice…and the moonlight fell upon the curled-up form of Cait Sith atop an inert Moogle. The little AI looked up at her and smiled in relief. "Thank goodness. My Moogle doesn't appear to be working properly and I don't have a Fire materia, so I'm afraid I was quite stuck without your help."

Tifa managed to smile back even though it felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her world. It wasn't Cait's fault that he wasn't Cloud or Marlene or Denzel. "No problem." She reached down, lifted the little cat AI out and placed him on her shoulders. Tucking the Moogle under her arm, she made her way back to the others.

" – and I don't see the need to soak me like that, you little brat –"

"Cloud, Denzel and Marlene are missing," Tifa interrupted, cutting across Barret without preamble.

The big man fell silent, looking stricken. "Marlene…?"

Tifa swallowed past the lump that seemed to have lodged in her throat. "There were only seven…shells, for lack of a better word. There should be ten."

Nanaki broke the heavy silence, twitching his flame-tipped tail uneasily. "Perhaps they just did not accompany us? They might have remained behind in Edge. Or been transported elsewhere for another purpose." Left unsaid was idea that something had gone wrong with their teleportation – that that terrifying journey through non-existence had not ended in a re-emergence into reality for the blond swordsman and the children.

Barret scowled ferociously, fiddling with his gun arm. "Gettin' real sick of the Planet's shit around about now. Isn't it enough that that we saved the goddamn world?" His anger did nothing to cover the fear for his daughter, evident in his voice. "What the hell is going on now? Where even are we?"

"The Nibel mountains," said Tifa, seizing gratefully on the distraction.

"What?" Yuffie blinked in astonishment. "I thought we were on the Northern continent, near Icicle Inn or something."

"No, I'd recognise these peaks anywhere. We're very close to Nibelheim; the old Mako reactor is just a couple of peaks over in fact," Tifa said grimly. That Mako reactor, and Nibelheim itself, were the location of some of her worst memories.

"Great," Yuffie muttered, looking disgusted. "We're going to have to go into the creepy fake town to get supplies too."

Tifa barely hid her grimace. It was true. They only had whatever was on them at the time of transportation. It was lucky they had been geared up for a trip, so they had least had all their materia and weapons on them, but most of the food and medicine had been on-board the Shera.

She gave herself a mental shake. Now was not the time to get distracted. They needed to organise themselves and put together a plan. "Is everyone suffering from headaches and nausea?" Tifa asked, her thoughts running ahead.

It soon became apparent that they all were afflicted with it to a lesser or greater degree, apart from Cait, which they assumed was because he had no organic material in his body. Yuffie was the worst off ("No surprises, there," the ninja grumbled in disgust) but they weren't sure if it was her usual susceptibility to travel sickness ("That doesn't apply to teleportation, you idiots!") that was causing her to feel it more severely.

"We'll start walking towards Nibelheim," Tifa decided. "Yuffie, if you get worse, let us know. Barret, Nanaki, if you could activate your Chocobo Lures that would be a big help. If there are any birds in the area, a lift would definitely be good, but I don't think we should hang around in the hopes that one might come along. When we get to the town we can buy winter gear and food, and hopefully get a good enough signal for the PHSs to work."

You had better pick up, Cloud…

There was general agreement for her plan, although Yuffie also swept the area with her Sense materia before they set off. "Nothing," the ninja muttered, looking disappointed.

Despite telling herself not to get her hopes up, Tifa felt her heart fall a little at the confirmation that Cloud, Denzel and Marlene weren't in the area and the dread squeezed her heart a little tighter. She shook her head firmly. We expected that.

They had been walking for several hours and warding off frostbite solely by the virtue of their Fire materia, which was a frankly exhausting way to keep warm, when the Lures finally paid off. Four inquisitive yellow chocobos pushed in close to their little group with a chorus of curious 'wark!'s, nibbling on hair and clothing as they investigated their new flock.

However, the number of chocobos meant that they had to double up in some cases. Tifa was rather surprised when Vincent offered to share with her, as she knew well that the gunman valued his personal space. "Better you than Yuffie," he offered dryly by way of explanation. "And if you're not riding with me, she'll jump on regardless of whether I offer or not."

"You know me so well," the ninja smirked from her position behind Cid. "And next time I'm driving, old man."

Cid grunted around a cigarette, jabbing his heels into the chocobo to get it moving. "In your dreams, brat."

The bickering started again, as they moved off down the mountain and Tifa had to hide a smile at the familiar semi-playful quarrelling. With the chocobos, travelling was much faster, and they only paused at dawn to eat what little they had on them and give the birds a rest. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon when a sudden shout came from Yuffie at the head of the group. "I see the reactor!"

"Not far to go now then," Tifa muttered. "Follow the trail down the mountain," she called out, raising her voice. "Left fork, then take a right."

"I remember the way, Teef!" the ninja yelled back. "Give me some credit!"

Tifa coughed, deliberately loud, a smile playing about her lips. "Oh really? I must be misremembering that time you tried to navigate through the Junon mountains on memory alone."

"…What mountains? What are you talking about? I've never even heard of these 'Junon mountains'," Yuffie coughed.

"Smooth, brat, smooth," Cid snorted.

"Like you could do better, old man," Yuffie retorted.

"Who do you think flies the fuckin' ship, princess? I navigate just fine!"

"What has that to do with the price of bacon in Mideel? Navigating on the ground is totally different from navigating in the air!"

"And you'd know all about that, being such an expert on flying…"

Tifa shook with laughter, as Vincent glanced over his shoulder. His mouth was hidden by the collar of his cloak, but something about him suggested faint amusement. "They are irrepressible, are they not?"

Tifa nodded, still laughing. "Always."

The group headed further down the mountain and all of Tifa's amusement died away as she got her first glimpse of Nibelheim nestled in the curve of the valley below. Fake-Nibelheim, she reminded herself. That place is not my home, and never will be.

"Movement ahead!"

Yuffie's call made the group reflexively reach for their weapons. They had encountered few monsters so high in the mountain range, but those they had had easily been dispatched at range by Vincent's Cerberus and Barret's Missing Score. This close to the mako reactor, however, there was an increased chance of monsters, and powerful ones at that, twisted by the mako into unnatural strength.

"Stand down! It's just a kid!"

The disbelief in Yuffie's voice echoed the disbelief that Tifa was feeling. Who would let their child out unescorted in these mountains? Then she shook her head with mixture of amusement and exasperation. How could I forget? It's not like there's much of anything to do around here. The kid's probably snuck out and gone for a wander; I used to do it all the time.

"Um, Tifa?" There was an odd tone to Yuffie's voice. "You might…want to come down here."

What…? The martial artist frowned. Still, she dismounted and jogged forward towards the head of their little caravan. And then stopped dead.

Standing on the trail in front of them, all wrapped up in a thick pale-blue parka, was a young girl with dark brown hair, fierce burgundy eyes and a scowl distorting her pretty features. This was not the remarkable thing. The remarkable thing was that she was undeniably a younger version of Tifa.

What…? The martial artist's brain was nearly blank with shock; only one thought kept looping over and over. She could be a clone of my thirteen-year-old self…she's completely identical.

Then the young girl's gaze fell on Tifa and the scowl melted away, to be replaced by shock. "Mum…?"

Tifa jerked, the sudden hurt and vulnerability and painful hope achingly apparent in her younger self's voice, sending answering echo of pain through her.

"No…I'm not…" Tifa faltered, and then suddenly a set of arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, squeezing almost tight enough to hurt. She looked down at the dark head pressed against her collarbone, so much like Denzel in need of comfort that she instinctively wrapped her arms around the younger girl in return.

"I've missed you so much, Mum," her younger self mumbled, tears evident in her voice.

Tifa was at a loss. What on earth is happening –

THE IMBALANCE WILL BE CORRECTED.

Tifa flinched violently at the exact same moment as the girl in her arms, as another consciousness brushed their minds. It was a fleeting instant of contact but Tifa had a brief overwhelming sense of size, deep and vast and ancient and too much for her mind to comprehend.

Then the younger girl gasped in shock and her head jerked up and Tifa met her eyes –

Sunlight was falling through the window onto the big piano, the white oak glowing under the rays. "Are you ready, Tifa?" her father asked. His hands looked so big next to hers, poised on the ivory keys side by side. She nodded determinedly, tossing her hair over one shoulder to keep it out of the way. She could do this –

Stumbling up the mountain, tears blurring her vision, crying and gasping in shock, "Come back Mum, please, come back, come back, come back –"

"– ever set foot in this house again!" Tifa heard her father roaring from downstairs and craned her neck to see out of the window from where she was propped up against a mountain of pillows. She caught a glimpse of a small figure with distinctive blond hair tearing away from the house as if Nibel wolves were at his heels, and her heart sank –

She pulled on the brand new gloves, flexing her hands and watching as the brown leather pulled taut across her knuckles. She looked up at her instructor and Zangan chuckled at the wonderment on her face. "I will teach you how to defend yourself, little one."

Tifa clenched her fists. "And fight. I don't ever want to be hurt by a monster again –"

"Will you promise me, Cloud?" Her gaze was fierce as she looked at the short blond boy next to her on the water tower. "If I ever need help, you'll come rescue me?" As much as it galled her to admit, she now knew that there were some monsters she wouldn't be able to defeat alone – and who was stronger than a SOLDIER? Besides Cloud had already proved how strong and loyal he was, even as an ordinary person, even after she repaid him by avoiding his company on her father's orders. Shame made her duck her head. "I promise to do the same, if I can." She was determined to make it up to him –

Tifa gasped, her awareness of her surroundings flooding back. She was looking directly into her younger counterpart's wide, shocked eyes. Then, with no fanfare whatsoever, the young girl dissolved before her very eyes. Her arms suddenly held nothing but air, as the girl melted into a cloud of glittering green particles, much like a body with a high-concentration of mako did before it returned to the Lifestream.

Tifa continued to stare at the spot her younger self been, her eyes wide and unseeing. Her mind was bursting with childhood memories; that which had faded and dulled with age were suddenly bright and fresh, as though newly made. She was distantly aware that all the pain, the headaches and nausea and aches that had lingered since that teleportation – no, not a teleportation – had vanished, leaving her body strong and unhindered as ever.

The martial artist's shallow breathing was the only sound to break the heavy silence for several long seconds. Then Yuffie spoke.

"So…did anyone else just see Tifa hug a mini-Tifa and then the mini-Tifa dissolved into green sparks? Not just me then? Good. I'd hate to think I was going crazy or anything."

A/N: Well, guess that answering some speculation going on the reviews about whether or not the time-travellers would be meeting their younger counterparts. :P FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES *cough* Sorry, got derailed into another fandom for a second there. xD

Also, I hope no one's too upset by the final tally of time-travellers – it was my intention from very early on in the planning to send the entire original squad back in time (plus Marlene and Denzel :D). I think I've only seen it done once before and the story didn't get very far.

As always, thank you for reading! If you have any specific questions you want, ask them in the reviews – I'll do my best to answer, although I'll avoid details on any significant plot stuff for obvious reasons. :) I'd love to hear what you think either way.