I'm dedicating this chapter to Denebola Leo, author on this site, for having the patience to actually READ this chapter in its early nascent stages.
Chapter 1. 1986-1995
His earliest memory was her.
She lived in the house right next door. That house was bigger. Some people said it was better. Cloud didn't think so. He liked the house he had, just him and his mom.
She had lots of friends. Cloud had few. He had only ever remembered he and his mother. Unlike everyone else in the village, he had no father.
He'd had a dad once too, but when he asked his mom, she said didn't matter.
"He's joined the Lifestream," his mom told him.
"What does that mean?" Cloud demanded; but Claudia only smiled sadly.
Cloud didn't know what to think. How come a dad didn't matter? But it was okay, he guessed. He loved his mom.
And then there was her...
She was the little brown-haired girl. Everyone knew that, everyone knew her, and her family too. His mom said her dad was the mayor. When Cloud asked what that was, she said it was someone important to the town.
Cloud was confused? Wasn't everyone important to the town? He said so, and his mom said, "In their own way, yes." So she must be important to the town too.
He saw her every day as he toddled past. She didn't talk to him, but every time she saw him, she would smile. It made him want to smile back.
One day, he saw her, alone, close by his house. He wanted to run back inside and hide before she saw him, by himself as always; but today, for some reason, he decided to be brave.
He walked over. She turned her head and smiled but she hung her head down shyly. Why is she shy? Cloud wondered. She's so popular. I'm the loser.
"Hi," he began, unsure. "I'm Cloud. Uh, I live next door to you."
"I know," she said. "But you never come talk to me."
Cloud didn't know what to say to that. He tried to remember good manners. "Uh… I'm sorry, I guess?"
"I was just teasing," she told him, and this time she looked him right in the eyes.
"Did you see the shooting start last night?" she suddenly asked.
Her eyes lit up when she said it. He had seen the shooting star, but he thought he liked her eyes better. Red… only kind of not. Brownish, goldish, glow-y. They were kind of like stars, too, the way they always shined when she was happy.
And she usually was happy. He liked to see her that way.
"Did you make a wish on it?" she asked.
"I couldn't think of one," he admitted.
"Maybe a wish for someone important?" she asked. "Like your dad?"
I should have made a wish for you, he thought. To make sure you always smile. Stupid. "I don't have a dad," he said.
"You do," she told him. "He's just in the Lifestream."
"How did you know that?" he asked. He was worried she wouldn't like him without a dad.
She stopped for a minute. "I heard your mom say so," she admitted. "I, uh, was walking near your window…" She stretched out her hand a tiny bit, like she wanted to touch him. "It's okay, you know. Everyone had a dad once. It's not bad just because you don't have him with you anymore."
"Oh," was all Cloud could say. He felt better… a little. She doesn't seem to mind… "What are you doing right now?" he suddenly burst out. Why was she alone, was what he meant. Why didn't she have anything better to do than talk to him.
"My friends all went into the hills for the day. My dad said I'm not allowed to go, that only boys can go up there." She stamped her foot impatiently. "It's so silly. One day , I'm going to be as brave as those boys, and I'll go wherever I want."
Cloud thought it was silly too, but for now… "I guess… my mom told me that boys are supposed to take care of girls. That's what good guys do," he finished lamely.
She looked cross. "Not only. My mom takes care of my dad all the time." Cloud figured that was probably true. "But still, why didn't you go?"
"No one invited me." He felt like such a dork saying it.
"Well, I guess, there's two of us stuck here," she pouted. Then she looked right at him, and she smiled again. Her eyes danced and laughed. "So, I guess you're supposed to take care of me, right? Wanna play?"
"Sure!" Cloud replied happily.
"My name is Tifa," the girl told him, grabbing his left hand in her right. "Let's go!"
And from then on he was in love.
He didn't see her every day, but from then on they played together often – just the two of them. Cloud asked Tifa once why the other boys didn't like him, but she just shook her head and didn't tell him anything.
Tifa didn't want to tell him. The other boys thought he was small, and weak. He WAS tiny, the shortest boy in the village, but she thought it was cute. And why did it matter, anyway? He was nice.
Cloud wished he could see her all the time. They were almost like best friends already, right? He didn't tell her, but sometimes, he would go up to her house and spy on her. He knew it was bad, but he couldn't help it. Her room was on the second floor, but there was a tree just tall enough that he could see right in, and just bushy enough that no one could really see him.
She played the piano a lot. There was one piece she played that he really liked. It was kind of slow and sweet. It made him feel at home, even if he was just looking in her window from a tree. He wanted to see what it was like inside her home.
He wished she would invite him in.
One day, she wasn't playing her piano. A couple of her friends were in the room, but he didn't see her at first. Then he looked down a little, and there she was.
She was sitting next to her bed. She was crying.
She wasn't supposed to cry. He wanted to make sure she was smiling all the time, like she was supposed to be. Cloud wanted to go to her, run inside her house, hug her and tell her to stop crying, that everything would be okay. But WHY was she crying? he wondered. He didn't know. What if it was something he couldn't make okay?
Instead, he ran home and asked his mother.
"Sit down, Cloud," she told him, patting her bed next to her. Cloud did as he was told. "I have something to tell you." She paused. "I don't know the best way to tell you this, but… remember how we talked about your dad going back to the Lifestream?" Cloud nodded. "Well, Tifa's mother… she went back to the Lifestream too."
Cloud was suddenly afraid. "Are you going back to the lifestream, too?"
Claudia laughed. "No, Cloud, I'm not going anywhere. Not for a long time." There were so many memories she couldn't share with Cloud yet. All her history before he was born… it hardly mattered to her, anymore. A lifetime of traveling, jumping from place to place – Junon, Banora, Wutai – choosing finally to return to her ancestral home with a child inside her belly and nothing else but hopes for what was to come. From the time Cloud was born, nothing else mattered. He was her world now, and Claudia had no desire to go anywhere else.
Later that evening, Cloud ran to his mother while she was preparing supper. "I thought of something, Mom!" he announced proudly.
Claudia stopped stirring for a moment. "Oh?" she asked.
"I have a really good idea!" Cloud announced proudly. "If Tifa doesn't have a mom anymore, why don't you marry her dad? Then she would have a mom, and I would have a dad! It's perfect!" he yelled. And I would see Tifa every day, he thought to himself. I wouldn't have to worry about friends. My best friend would always be with me.
Claudia laughed, and ruffled his hair. "It's a good idea, Cloud," she said, "but it's not so simple. You have to like each other."
"But you DO like each other," Cloud replied, confused. "I mean, I see you talking to him in the square all the time." That was usually when he was looking around to see if Tifa was with her dad.
"I mean, really, really like. You have to love someone," she told her son. "I mean, as much as I love you."
"But…" Cloud didn't understand. He really, really liked Tifa. Did that mean he loved her, as much as his mom? "Couldn't you try to really, really like Tifa's dad?"
"Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way," Claudia said. "I wish it did. But Brian Lockhart and I are just friends. You'll know when you're older." She turned back to her cooking; it was just at that perfect point, rich and full of flavor, a minute before it started to burn. "In your life, I hope you'll be able to love someone that much. If you're lucky maybe you'll experience it more than once. And then if you have kids, too… at least one…" She smiled, but she seemed sad now. "Then you'll really know what love is."
Tifa sniffled in the night air. She was still crying, a little, but somehow crying outside seemed a little better than crying inside. She didn't know why that should be. Maybe she'd just done too much of the other today.
Her friends had all gone home. Her dad, had been up for a little bit, but then he kept drinking that weird stuff he liked – Tifa tried a sip once, it tasted awful and it hurt to drink, why did he even like it? – but it made him go to sleep, snoring, leaving Tifa alone with her thoughts.
She didn't want to be alone.
She heard voices from next door, and looking over the fence, she could see inside. Cloud and his mom were having dinner. His mom. He never had a dad, but now she didn't have a mom anymore – wasn't that worse?
She thought about knocking on the door, and she even went all the way up the path, but just before she was going to, she got scared. What if they didn't want her there? After all, Cloud never came to HER house. Why didn't he? He was her friend. All he had to do was knock on her door, but… he never did.
Instead, she just stood there, listening.
"…the reactor," Cloud's mom was saying. "All that Mako energy in the mountain…"
"Why is there all that energy in the mountain?" Cloud demanded.
His mom chuckled. "No one really knows, dear," she replied. "But mako comes from the Lifestream, and they say the Lifestream is made up of souls…"
"There are dead people in the mountain?!" Cloud exclaimed, afraid.
"Not really DEAD people," Claudia told him. "It's… um… I guess I don't really know how to describe this. I'll try another way. Let me tell you a story."
That was good. Cloud loved stories.
"Once upon a time…" Claudia stopped. "No, that's a stupid beginning. Not for something that happens naturally, all the time."
Cloud thought. "Once upon all the time?" he suggested.
"Something like that," Claudia laughed. "Anyway. Children are born from the Lifestream, and then they grow up, and then they have more children, and then they go back to the Lifestream again. The Lifestream… I guess you could call it spirit energy."
"So we're all made out of spirit energy?" Cloud looked at his fork. "I thought you told me once we were all made out of food and that's why I had to sit down for dinner."
"That, too," Claudia told her son. She reached to ruffle his hair, just as golden but even messier than her own. "But I'm talking about much later. You know… like after DESSERT, even." Cloud's eyes grew wide.
"The spirits have to go back to the planet. This mountain is part of the Planet. Some say it's one of the closer parts of the planet – that's the whole reason ShinRa put the reactor here in the first place. All the mako in the mountain – you can even find entire fountains of it. Maybe someday you'll even get to see one."
Cloud seemed enraptured. Tifa, still hiding outside, hoped one day she might see one, too.
"So those souls… it's not that they exactly join with the mountain, it's not a graveyard - it's the other way around. The mountain is just proof that those people lived." Claudia waved a spoon upwards for emphasis. "The way those souls travel… they probably go to the mountain, and probably over. You see, we all have to go beyond the mountain sometime. And that's how we find what we are looking for."
"But we're dead on the other side?" Cloud asked.
"It's not about the other side of the mountain," his mom said. "Is about the getting there. And we shouldn't ever do it alone."
Tifa didn't hear the last part. She was already walking away, thinking. An idea was beginning to form. She wasn't supposed to be going up to the mountain, but.. .She wouldn't be able to tell anyone.
Supposed to or not, it was already getting dark. Too late to do anything tonight. She'd need a good night's rest anyway…
Cloud thought his mom said she and Tifa's dad were friends. But it didn't seem like a friend when Brian Lockhart came to their door early the next day.
His mom told him to stay inside, but Cloud could stick his head out the window and hear them yelling.
"It's all your fault!" Tifa's dad was screaming at Cloud's mom. "You city girls… all your crazy ideas. Talking about going back to the lifestream.. you made my daughter think she could find her mom again!"
"It's true," Claudia replied primly. "The Lifestream, anyway. If Tifa got the wrong idea about it, then perhaps you didn't teach your daughter properly."
"Well, somehow she got the idea to go up to the reactor all by herself!"
Cloud didn't listen to the rest of the argument anymore. Tifa went up to the reactor. She wasn't supposed to go there. She said she wanted to be able to go anywhere, but… what if she's in danger? Mom always told me it was important to keep girls safe, he remembered. What if she's in danger?
I'll go help her! I can do it! Then she'll be my friend forever…
He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, up his secret paths that he'd had time to find. Sometimes it was helpful to be small; sometimes it was helpful to be alone.
Near the mountain, he heard voices. He recognized them. All the boys that Cloud hated, that were always hanging around with Tifa and wouldn't let him near…
"- already ran down and told her dad," one said.
"He's going to be so angry."
"That's why we've got to go get her, bring her back!"
She doesn't want to go back, thought Cloud. If you're her friends, you should help her, not hold her back…
"-gonna follow her?"
"-nah-"
"scared?"
"No, you're scared-"
Cloud ignored them and kept on going.
He found her. Up the mountain, before the bridge. She stood there, looking so small and alone. Cloud wanted to run to her…
"Tifa!" he called. She turned…
"What are you doing?" he yelled, jogging up to her. "You're not supposed to cross the mountain alone!"
Up close, he could see dried tears on her cheeks. "I wanna see my mom," she said. ""I have to keep going…"
"Then I'll go with you," he told her. "Keep going. I'll be right behind you."
"Thank you, Cloud," she sniffled. She stepped out onto the bridge, and Cloud, true to his word, followed her across…
The bridge wobbled, the high winds of Mount Nibel shaking the beams. Cloud clung to the handropes nervously; he was scared, but he wouldn't be like those other boys. He wouldn't leave her behind.
She was almost to the other side… he felt it before he even saw it. Creaks, underneath his feet… He grabbed desperately for a handhold, catching a clinging beam before his feet came out beneath him, but his thoughts were all on Tifa... and suddenly she was GONE, beams broken in two beneath her…
He reacted without thinking, his hand grasping, catching her wrist. She looked up at him, terror in her eyes…
Tifa… gotta save her!
He was so weak. Too weak. He tried desperately to hold on, but his hand was slipping, slipping…
…and then they fell… but he never let go of her hand…