Cloud stands before the church in the Sector 5 slums—what's left of them, anyways—and stares up at the looming spires in a pensive brooding that seems to be his default, these days. There is debris scattered all along the paths twining through the area—large chunks of metal and concrete, cratered into the ground, charred at the edges from the kiss of fiery tornadoes. The scents of death and decay hang in the air to cover the ozone smell of mako that Cloud has always associated with Midgar. He finds himself unsurprised that the church appears relatively untouched by the devastation that Meteor leveled on the large majority of city. After all, Aerith told him that this is—was—a sacred place.
Aerith told him a lot of things.
But now she's gone, and he would give anything for her to tell him one more thing—anything—to explain, to set him right.
Cloud has seldom felt connected to the world, to reality. No, for as long as he can remember—whatever that means in his case—he's always been adrift in one way or another. At first, it was the scattered fragments of his personality, blanketed by a thick fog of distorted memories. Then it was his disbelief in himself as an actual person while Hojo and Sephiroth claimed ownership of his psyche and credit for his creation. Now, however, it is the absolute, self-machinated separation from his loved ones that keeps him untethered—one person in particular, really. The one who had always been his reason, his cornerstone, his partner.
Cloud feels like she died the day that she killed Aerith. The woman he knew is gone, snatched away by the arcing glint off a swinging dagger.
Her name, once having held such a tangibly calming power over him, tastes like venom on his lips. He briefly allows himself to consider her eyes, those discoid flares of flames and blood. He used to liken them to the welcoming flicker of a warm hearth. No longer.
And he hates her, despite the minuscule voice at the back of his head that begs him not to. He simply cannot help it. It is clear to him that she did what she thought would save the world, but he can only loathe her decision, her supposed justification, the ease with which she carried out the act. With such grace and sureness so inherent, she erased a special light in the world. She killed their friend to appease a hunch, a possibility; there was a choice between a deadly theory and a final stand of loyalty—to Cloud, the answer is and was and always should have been clear. Right?
He knows that his friends think he loved—loves—Aerith. In a way, though not the way they assume, he did—does. Aerith never failed to make the future seem brighter, and the unique hope that she gave to Cloud connected them in a way that nothing else could match. Even so, she was never the most important person in his life. She was never his foundation, or his purpose, or the goal toward which he was striving, despite the hope she provided him.
That honor belonged to someone else. And now that someone is gone, and Cloud is unanchored.
She ran. At first, he thought that he would be content to never see her again. And even though the person that he believed her to be is dead, he can't pretend that whatever remains of her is gone. She's out there, somewhere, a shade living with what she's done, and he can't help but believe that if there is any sort of balm for the vengeance festering in his soul, it involves her. Her blood, her tears, her yelling, her silence—he simply doesn't know, but he needs to find out.
Cloud turns from the church, utterly unable to bring himself to enter. Instead, he climbs onto his motorcycle and weaves his way through fresh wreckage atop past wreckage, both physically and in his mind. Thoughts and emotions—some of which he acknowledges and some of which he ignores—swirl together in a poisonous mist that has been his only consistent companion these past months.
Cloud heads for Junon. The trip will take most of the day, but the bounty for the delivery is worth the drive. He will stay overnight and wander around the local dives, listening for any hint of her whereabouts.
He isn't sure what he'll do if he hears something, or if he simply runs into her. Barret's threat echoes in his mind, but he can't bring himself to care. It's easier to simply run on autopilot, to listen to his instincts, instead of trying to make sense of what the fuck anything means anymore.
He'll find her, eventually. It's a slow hunt, but a hunt, nonetheless.
.O.O.O.O.O.
Tomorrow will mark one year since Meteorfall.
Tifa moves around behind the bar in a daze, serving customers with a plastic smile and hollow words. Ages of experience has taught her how to fake engagement to near perfection, though it's not as if she has to try hard to fool people after they've had a few drinks. She is thankful for the kind townsfolk in Gongaga—they don't complicate her life by starting fights or getting frisky, so she can make it through her shifts in relative peace, most of the time. On nights like tonight, however, she misses the rowdiness of the Sector 7 crowd; or rather, she misses the distraction that they would have provided. Who knows where those familiar faces are now? Scattered around the Planet, surely, driven out from the desolate carcass of Midgar like dandelion seeds in a breeze, or buried beneath the smoldering remains of Shinra's empire, frozen into whatever twist of horror reflects the impending doom that they last saw—
Tifa's thoughts are much too loud for her tastes.
In her pocket, her phone vibrates with the third message of the evening. She wagers that it's Barret again, or perhaps Yuffie. Whoever it is, they're checking in to see if she's alright—does she need anything? Does she want to finally meet up? She's in their thoughts. The list of people who have her contact information is small, but they are persistent. When she finishes her work, she'll reluctantly type a succinct message back to let them know that she is alive and that will be her sole contribution to the attempt at communication.
It's all she can give, honestly. She doesn't want to open up an avenue for fear of receiving care that she doesn't deserve. She hopes that eventually, her friends will move on and leave her to guard the past alone.
"Help! Please, someone help!"
Tifa raises her gaze to the door of the pub as it clatters shut behind a frantic man clutching at his arm just below the elbow. His voice is shrill and thready with distress and as he staggers toward the bar, Tifa can see that his wide eyes are bloodshot. Patrons break out into alarmed chatter, some rising from their seats and reaching out to steady the man as he sways.
The other bartender dashes through the partition and rushes to the man's side. Her hands flutter over his arm, which is covered by a dark shirtsleeve.
"Sir?" she says over his quiet, incoherent mumbling. "What's wrong?"
"M-my arm," he stutters. "It hu-urts. Hurts."
Tifa simply watches in stunned silence.
"Can I see it?" her coworker asks, placing gentle fingers over the man's white knuckles.
With a strained grunt, the man yanks up his shirtsleeve, hiking it as high as it will go. His breath comes in heavy pants.
Gasps go up around the room from everyone who can see.
The man's skin appears…bruised, Tifa thinks at first—but no, there's a black secretion oozing from his arm, dripping onto the wooden floor from shallow sores. Dark veins crawl away from the wound toward his wrist and shoulder, as if coaxing the sores to spread. They stand out sinisterly against the man's ashen skin.
The other bartender gasps and flinches away. Her hands come up to cover her mouth as she pales.
"Holy shit," exclaims one of the bar's regulars from his seat nearby Tifa. "C'mon, man, let's get you to the clinic."
He slams a handful of gil onto the bar top next to his half-finished beer and sidles up to the man so that he can help him walk. It does not escape Tifa's notice that the volunteer avoids touching the damaged arm in his efforts. A curious quiet descends as the pair hobbles out the door and into the warm Gongaga evening. The injured man's whimpers fade away and conversation bursts back to life, now that there is fresh kindle to fuel it.
"I've never seen anything like that," Tifa's colleague says with a shiver as she returns. "It looked like his skin was rotting. Do you think it's an infection of some sort?"
"No idea," Tifa mutters back and she resumes her monotonous task of washing dishes. Something about the wild look in the man's eyes is stuck at the forefront of her mind.
Luckily, her coworker falls into a discussion of the strange occurrence with the customers instead of trying to pursue one with Tifa, who is content to simply finish cleaning the wet glasses and finish out the last hour of her shift by going through the motions.
When she arrives back at her small apartment, she slips out of her boots and removes the gloves that she wears on her walk home as a habitual precaution. It is then that she makes a decision about the dilemma that has been circling in her thoughts all day. She pads into her tiny kitchenette and reaches up to grab the unopened bottle of whiskey that has been sitting in her cupboard for weeks. She bought in on a whim for this very night, having figured that perhaps she would see if people were onto something when they attempted to numb themselves with alcohol. Not long into her time at Seventh Heaven, Tifa had promised herself that she would never drink to suppress her emotions, to dull the cutting trauma of her past. But back then, Tifa hadn't thought that she would murder her best friend, either.
Out of the entirety of their little band of renegades, Aerith was the least deserving of such a fate. The rest of them had sins to shoulder, lives laden with mistakes—it shouldn't have been her who had to die for the Planet. It shouldn't have been her. That one truth hitches and repeats endlessly in Tifa's mind.
It shouldn't have been her.
It shouldn't have been her.
It should've been—
Tifa raises her bottle of whiskey.
It burns oh so pleasantly as it traces a scorching path down her throat and into the heart of her, where it infuses warmth into every inch of her limbs. She lets herself drop down onto her bed and takes another swig as she arranges herself comfortably. Her phone buzzes again from its place in her bag, but she ignores it. She'll answer tomorrow. Maybe.
Or perhaps, if the amber medicine succeeds in dimming her grief, she'll wake up and drink some more.
.O.O.O.O.O.
Aerith is concerned. She's also irritated. And sad.
She stands on the edge of her flower bed, watching as Cloud goes through his materia collection. He's amassed an impressive stash in the past twenty months, having obtained some obscure powers that she has never heard of along his travels. The colorful orbs lay in scattered piles around him as he adds new procurements and sets aside some to sell.
At her side, Zack whistles. "I'm kind of jealous, honestly."
Zack has always loved materia. During their time together, he used to chatter endlessly about whatever neat powers he would find on his missions as a SOLDIER—and with Aerith having an affinity for materia, herself, it was a topic that the two of them never managed to exhaust. Also, she simply finds his enthusiasm incomprehensibly adorable.
But she is too somber to smile at his envious admiration. "Well, I'm worried."
"Me, too," he admits after a pause, his voice dropping its lightness in favor of a more serious baritone.
Aerith shakes her head and looks up at Zack beseechingly. "Why is he doing this to himself? To her?"
Zack merely shrugs and gives her an apologetic glance before refocusing on his friend. "I wish I knew. Cloud's never been the best at dealing with his emotions."
"He's just so…angry," she says, really just to think out loud. "At Tifa. At himself. At the world. I just wish that he would realize that it's no one's fault—least of all his and Tifa's. They need each other and I know that he misses her. A lot."
"I'm surprised that he's so set on blaming her," Zack admits. "After all, she was his whole world, back when we worked together. Not that he admitted it—I could just tell. But…he cared about you a lot, and she kil—…well. You know." He runs a hand through his hair and blows out a pensive sigh. "I think that he feels responsible, and he just doesn't know how to deal with it."
Aerith understands this. She understands Cloud. He's a protector, and he carries the safety of his friends as obligations. When his loved ones are hurt, even when their pain is caused by events that are completely out of his control, those obligations turn into burdens. The collective weight of those loads settles into his slumped shoulders, his scowling brow, his heavy footsteps. Everything about him speaks of the guilt that he can't let go.
Her death is the heaviest of them all, though Zack's is almost as much so. And for someone who carries so much, Cloud has never learned how to process everything that has happened to him. He's never had the chance. Everyone has a limit. Aerith supposes that perhaps he simply can't hold anything more, and so it's easier to place the world on someone else's shoulders.
Even if that someone else is Tifa.
"At first, I thought that he would see reason." Aerith hugs herself. "But it's been a year and a half, now, and nothing has changed. I looked in on Tifa recently and…"
Zack's arm settles around her shoulders, drawing her into him so that she can share in his strength. "Yeah?"
Aerith presses the side of her face into him, grateful for the comforting solidity of his frame. "She's just not the same."
It's a pastel portrayal of a vibrantly concerning reality, but she doesn't wish to discuss those specifics at the moment.
"Mm."
The couple watch as Cloud listlessly packs up his materia. He replaces the small trunk in its hiding place—Aerith supposes he keeps it here as opposed to his apartment because robberies are quite common in Edge—and as he straightens up, he hisses through clenched teeth, his gloved hand reaching up to clasp the arm covered by a black sleeve.
"What the—" Zack starts.
Cloud grunts on a harsh exhale as he jerks up the billowing sleeve and peers down at his bicep with a sharp wince. Aerith takes a few steps toward him to get a better look, Zack following close behind. The skin of Cloud's upper arm is mottled with blackened blemishes that are shiny with liquid that runs in sluggish rivulets down his arm. The muscles and tendons spasm and pull taut, his fingers jerking as a pained noise rattles in his throat.
"Fuck," he swears in a harsh whisper, allowing the sleeve to fall and shaking out his arm with a staccato snap.
Aerith's eyes lock onto the shadowy droplets that have fallen onto the warped floorboards of the sanctuary. She feels the Planet's rejection of the substance—its potent, adamant aversion. She can sense something within those stains that she has felt in mere wisps lately, but wisps all the same.
Jenova. Sephiroth.
"What the hell was that about?" Zack wonders aloud, and Aerith realizes that Cloud is walking back toward the door as if nothing happened.
"Nothing good," she mutters, swallowing a lump of troubled apprehension.