Barret watches with a gaping jaw and wide eyes as the Lifestream erupts from Gaia's surface, warping and curling around Meteor where it hovers menacingly over a burning Midgar. The glimmering tendrils break up the spell, dissolving it in a flurry of dust and jade particles. Shockwaves from the spectral warfare shudder the Highwind even across the considerable distance. Barret grasps the railing before him to keep his footing on the tilting floor.
There is a flash of light that blinds him and everyone else, judging by the surprised exclamations around him. When its imprint clears from his vision, Barret exhales a hoarse swear.
Meteor is gone.
The Planet is still intact.
They're all alive.
He suddenly feels as if he might fall over, even though the airship has stabilized. A synopsis of the past few hours races through his mind, but it feels like a half-remembered dream or a strange book read years ago. It's all simply too much to process.
Disbelieving sighs break the quiet, but they are laden with sorrow. And there are three voices that should be among them, but that are obviously—loudly—absent.
Aerith is dead. Tifa is gone. Cloud is silent.
Barret is torn. He wants desperately to search for Tifa, who disappeared after rising from beside Aerith's body to throw herself at Sephiroth in an assault of soaring fists and materia blasts. Cloud was close behind, blade raised to deliver a series of devastating slashes that rent Sephiroth into nothing. As the Northern Crater began to crumple into itself, Barret glanced around frantically for Tifa. He didn't get to search for long before raining boulders forced him and the others to scramble for safety.
She was nowhere to be found—not along the path back to the Highwind, nor on the airship proper.
Barret needs to find her. He needs to shake her and demand to know why she killed Aerith. He needs her to tell him that she isn't a monster, that there was a reason, that the person he thought she was isn't a lie.
But he also needs to see Marlene. He has put her through too much, and the memory of Dyne's death is still so fresh that his arms itch to hold her.
Barret's fists tighten around the railing. A presence looms next to him.
Cloud's face is pure stone as he stares at the plume of smoke rising up over Midgar. Barret has never seen such darkness on his features, even when he was lost in a realm of broken memories and haunting visions. They have come so far, Barret thinks—from mutual animosity to a deep trust and camaraderie that could withstand nearly anything. But he feels miles in the mere feet that separate them now, and he knows that Cloud is in a place that is unreachable.
"If I ever see her again, I—," Cloud growls lowly, cutting off with a grind of his teeth. The vow hangs in the air, no less menacing for its incompleteness.
Barret doesn't say anything. There is nothing to be said.
.O.O.O.O.O.
The Great Glacier is utterly unforgiving.
That suits Tifa just fine, for she feels unforgivable.
Her exposed skin is subjected to alternating waves of numbness and painful stinging. The cold sapped any warmth from her hours ago, and she can track the chill as it grows closer to the core of her. It is killing her, she knows, as she trudges through the endless banks of snow, slipping on ice. Her hair and meager clothing are soaked with every tumble, but the frost that melts against her quickly solidifies in the slight breeze and chips off as she trudges onward. Tears have frozen into crystal ornaments on her cheeks.
Tifa doesn't know where she's going, just that she's descending from the top of the world because there is nothing else to do, nowhere in particular to go.
There is blood smeared across her arms and across the front of her white top. It marks her as a murderer, a grim reaper—a sinister beacon of crimson amidst the white landscape.
Another tide of self-loathing washes over her and Tifa considers laying down. Maybe if she sleeps, she'll wake up in a dream where she hasn't killed one of her dearest friends and the Planet isn't about to be obliterated. If she sleeps, she can place herself in Seventh Heaven, serving drinks to her friends. Aerith will smile sunnily as she sips a fruity cocktail. Wedge, Jessie, and Biggs will be there, whole and unharmed, and Cloud will toss his arm around her shoulder as he shoots her that soft smile that he seems to save only for her—
A soft whine escapes her dry throat.
Cloud will never smile at her like that again. Not after his turbulent eyes promised her nothing but hatred.
It is that knowledge that decides it for her. Tifa stops walking and allows herself to crumple in the snow. Her eyes flutter easily shut, heavy as they are, and numbness chases away the prickles of hypothermia. The next light gust brings the scent of flowers, and Tifa whispers the words she's repeated a thousand times since she ran from the Northern Crater.
"I'm sorry."
.O.O.O.O.O.
He watches from the place that he has claimed as his own—a place outside the material realm where the shadows of his desires clamor against invisible bounds of impossibility. But he is not entirely powerless here. Far from it.
He looks to one side and sees the burning rage in every line of Cloud's movements. There is fury in each breath, guilt in his eyes, and hopeless defeat in his voice. One the other side of the vision, a pale Tifa lies in perilous unconsciousness as the old man of the glacier frantically tends to her. Her beauty is still marred by ruby blood and diamond tears.
He smiles. The death of the Ancient may have turned the tide, but a tsunami lays on the horizon. With Cloud and Tifa irreparably separated, the shield between him and humanity will remain cleaved, both halves scattered.
As that last thought fades into surety, Sephiroth's consciousness splits into three.
The Remnants lay dormant, awaiting their advent into the world.
.O.O.O.O.O.
For all his silence, Vincent Valentine is perceptive.
That perception made him a good Turk. It pushed him to join Cloud and the others when they stumbled upon his prison in Nibelheim. And now, it guides him around the Planet as he keeps tabs on his friends. It allows him to notice the seemingly inconsequential happenings that speak of something wrong, something off.
A lengthening of the shadows in the Forgotten City. Jittery tension in the creatures he happens upon during his journeys. A general sense of foreboding.
Vincent has yet to place any importance on his suspicions, knowing that they could merely be a product of paranoia and coincidence, but he will not abandon them, either.
Now, however, his attention is called from such musings as Tifa Lockhart steps out of the quaint pub, locks the door behind her, and makes her way down the quiet sidewalk. Her hair—shorn just below her shoulders—blends in with the night around her, made only blacker by the contrasting light of the street lamps. She looks the same as Vincent remembers her from months ago, though she has traded her white top for a fitted blue shirt with sleeves that travel down to her bare forearms. As she walks, she retrieves a simple pair of gloves from her small bag and slips them on.
Vincent follows from above. Most of the rooftops of Gongaga are domed and difficult to traverse, but he manages to pursue her silently. However, the rigidity of her shoulders and the quickness of her steps tell him that she senses his watch over her.
Despite the boost in population following the destruction of Midgar, Gongaga has managed to remain somewhat antiquated in its customs. As such, the town's streets are deserted as midnight rolls past. Everyone keeps to a curfew of propriety instead of socializing into the early hours of mornings, as was typical of Midgar. Gongaga has grown, sprawling outward with the arrival of new business, residents, and infrastructure, and its southeastern border is now flush with the coast. Vincent doubts that there even would have been a bar for Tifa to work at here before Meteor.
Vincent has a lot of doubts. A lot of questions.
Despite his intrinsic tendency toward silence, there is an urge within him to leap down from his perch and demand answers from Tifa. He recalls her face that day as she landed next to him after her attack on Sephiroth, damning blood dripping from her arms. Her shattered eyes flitted from Aerith's body to Cloud as he delivered the final blow to Sephiroth, and then she ran.
But Vincent read the lacerations in her soul as if they were gashes across her face. He is utterly familiar with such remorse, such hatred of oneself. And that is why he is sure that there is a reason for what Tifa did.
He is also sure that she would not confide in him, should he ask it of her. She will merely run once more, carrying on in the tireless search for atonement that can never be reached.
There is, perhaps, one person who could get through to her, but Cloud is not in any position to be helping anyone—especially the woman he wants to kill.
Vincent leaps to another building, his golden claws latching into the shingles covering the sloped roof.
He hasn't seen Cloud since the week after Meteor, when Barret had attempted to rally their group in a search for Tifa. The resulting fight had been an explosion of snarled accusations and hoarse yells of choking grief.
"Aerith was right!" Barret bellowed after Cloud had delivered a succinct account of the moments before Aerith's death. "I hate it as much as you do, but she was!"
"You don't know that!" Cloud retorted, his voice growing louder with every word. His face was twisted into a deep sort of ire that Vincent could not recall having ever seen him express. Cobalt eyes were nearly glowing with the same tension that trembled in his clenched fists. "You don't know that Holy would have failed, or that the Planet needed Aerith's help to use the Lifestream against Meteor. You don't know that there wasn't another way!"
Barret took a step forward, away from the far wall of the inn at Kalm, and jabbed a shaking finger toward Cloud. The tableau they crafted resembled two thunderstorms nearing collision.
"You can't save everyone, Cloud! She knew that! She knew that her death would save millions, and Tifa knew it, too—"
"Don't." Cloud's voice was low and gravelly, though it cut through the air swiftly.
"Tifa trusted Aerith—she did what you couldn't do—"
"SHUT UP!" Cloud roared, taking a halting step forward. The air stilled immediately and noticeably after the reverb of his voice dissipated.
Vincent subtly glanced down at his bracer to ensure that he still had an incapacitating materia affixed.
All around them, the rest of their group watched in stunned silence. Yuffie's eyes were misty and wide as they darted between Cloud and Barret. Cid was glowering at the floor, his arms crossed, bereft of his typical cigarette. Nanaki and Reeve were absolutely still.
Vincent found himself marveling at how easily Cloud had turned on Tifa. But then he remembered that heartbreak tended to tear through logic—and love—like flames eating away at kindling.
"Who are you really mad at?" Barret asked after taming his breath.
Cloud merely glared for a few moments longer. Then, he snatched up his sword from where it leaned against the wall and stalked toward the door.
"Don't you dare go near her, Cloud," Barret warned. "If you hurt her, it'll be the last thing you ever do."
Cloud froze with his hand clenching the doorknob. His shoulders rose and fell to the beat of a measured breath and his jaw ticked with a swallowed reply. He wrenched the door open and then he was gone.
According to Cid, Cloud has refrained from actively searching for Tifa. Vincent is unsure how Cid knows this, but the conviction with which the information was passed invokes his tentative belief. Instead, Cloud is living—a term used quite loosely—in Edge and running a delivery service, traveling the world and picking up odd jobs along his routes.
Despite Cid's certainty, Vincent can't help but recognize Cloud's occupation for what it is: the perfect opportunity to accidentally find someone who is lost.
And so, he will continue to check in on Tifa as she passes the days in Gongaga. He will continue his search for a definitive piece of anything that will prove Aerith right, beyond all lurking doubt, and clear Tifa's conscience, ease Cloud's fury. He will continue to be perceptive.
Tifa slips through into the gated stairwell of her apartment complex, and Vincent vanishes into the dark.
.O.O.O.O.O.
"Words aren't the only way to tell someone what you're thinking."
Ironically, Cloud thinks to himself, that's the most perfect thing she could have said.
Meanwhile, Tifa wonders if he understands what she means. The feathery sensation of his bare hand running down the length of her arm gives her an answer.
Cloud allows himself to finally act on the impulse that he has spent so long restraining and wraps his arms around Tifa's waist with a gentle pressure.
Tifa closes her eyes in contentment as she feels Cloud's face press into her neck. Only the curtain of her hair separates his lips from her skin.
Cloud inhales the warm, sweet scent that always seems to cling to Tifa no matter how much sweat, blood, and monster fluid decorates her.
Tifa leans back into him for a moment, appreciating the solid pillar of his body, and then she turns in his arms and stares up into his eyes.
Cloud looks down at her and sees all the belonging of home.
Neither of them can say who moves in first. But they spend that night exploring each other until the last few secrets between them melt away. And none of the uncertainty of tomorrow can weaken their bond, which has been thinned and scored and tested until it gleams with resilience and permanence.
Permanence…if only…