The light of the flames illuminated Cloud's face as he surveyed the scene around him. Their home, up in flames. Cloud and Tifa had watched the same events unfold days prior, in Sephiroth's illusion. In that moment, Cloud had been strangely unbothered, reassuring Tifa that none of it was real. At first, anyway.

Now, Tifa could see and feel the extent of his devastation. Tifa remembered feeling much the same. The chaos and confusion. The helpless rage. The grief. Physical pain. Burns and wounds. And underneath it all, the terror and gut-wrenching realization that nothing would ever be the same.

Cloud's emotions were clear to Tifa, visceral and raw. But the images in his mind were disjointed and blurred. Tifa saw fire, smoke, and blood. Faces too. Dead villagers. A woman's face, eyes closed, blood spattered in her blonde hair. Through it all, Sephiroth's face flashed in his mind like specter.

Fire. Blonde hair. Smoke. Blood. Silver hair. A blade. Blood, too much blood.

Gasping, Cloud's knees buckled. The images stopped. His hands were still gripping Tifa's tightly. His weight almost dragged them both to the ground, but Tifa managed to hold him up. He breathed heavily for a moment, his head hanging between them.

"Not…this part…" he managed.

Cloud was half bent over, and he moved his forehead to rest on Tifa's forearm, where their hands were joined. He shook his head.

"I can't…it still doesn't make sense."

Tifa looked held him steady, trying to suppress her own trepidation about reliving what happened this night, and her fears of what Cloud's memories might unveil. After a moment, Cloud straightened again.

The look on his face was confused but trusting. It strengthened her resolve.

"It's okay, Cloud. What do you remember?" Tifa prompted him gently. "You said the truth was here. If you can't remember this part, what do you remember? Can you show me?"

Cloud studied her now. His eyes looked haunted as they traced the contours of her face. Pain rippled across his. His throat worked as he swallowed back some emotion that Tifa could not quite read.

"I think it's not…a good memory," he said slowly.

Tifa nodded. She understood, perhaps too well.

"I know," she whispered. "It's okay."

Cloud closed his eyes and Tifa did as well. She was used to this part by now. His hands tightened around hers. Immediately, Tifa could feel the memory changing around them. It was quieter. They were no longer outside. Tifa felt neither the wind nor the heat of the flames. She smelled metal and mako and blood, rather than the burn of smoke.

Even with her eyes closed, Tifa knew where they were. They were inside the reactor.

And though it was silent, Tifa could hear the echo of her own memories here. They sounded like sobs. Her own. They were the sobs of someone who had lost everything and had found herself utterly, hopelessly alone. You weren't here, Cloud. The thought came to her unbidden. Nobody was.

She remembered the way she had hunched over her father's body the last time she had seen him. The overwhelming grief of it all. Her dad and Tifa only had each other left in this world. He had loved and protected her, had done his best to take care of her on his own. Now he was gone. Slain just as carelessly as the burnt, eviscerated bodies in the village.

But the grief had transformed. The sobs had stopped. It was when Tifa had felt something for the first time, something she had never felt in her young life. She had been angry before, of course. Mad with her parents. Irritated with her friends.

This was different. This was rage. It was hatred.

Tifa had shouted. Sephiroth…SOLDIERs…Mako…Shinra…I'm sick of this! A ragged, broken cry. I'm sick of all of this! A singular, final sob. Then, she stood. She had reached for the sword on the floor. It had been ridiculous in her hand, longer than she was tall.

Then, she had done something foolish. Something reckless. Something someone would only do if they felt they had nothing left. She had attempted to kill Sephiroth – the Sephiroth, SOLIDER First Class, war hero, infamous swordsman – with his own weapon. A weapon she could barely lift.

Even now, years later, Tifa would sometimes wonder why she had survived it, when nobody else had. Certainly, it was not because she was stronger or smarter than anyone else. Nor had she been in the right place at the right time to evade death. Rather, she had run to it.

Tifa did not want to open her eyes.

But she could feel Cloud watching her. Waiting. And so, she opened her eyes, cautiously, keeping them on Cloud and avoiding their surroundings. His eyes told her that he could sense her rising fear. Her reluctance. He bowed his head, apologetically.

"We have to go this way," he said, pointing. "I'm sorry."

Tifa eyes were drawn toward the bridge that led into the inner room of the reactor. She knew to expect it, but still she froze at the sight of the body on the floor. A red shirt and leather vest. Matching red band holding back hair that was lighter than Tifa's. In most ways, Tifa had taken after her mother.

She tried not to look at her father's body. It had been the last time she had seen her father, but it was not how she wished to remember him. There had been no tender last moments between them as there had been with her mother. Only her father's body lying on the ground, gone before she could even say goodbye.

Cloud held her hand tightly as they moved past. His body was as tense as hers. Tifa felt flashes of his emotions as he walked past Brian Lockhart's body, abandoned on the floor. A growing, dreadful anticipation. Despair. Too slow. Too weak. Too late.

When they entered the inner room of the reactor, Cloud came to a sudden stop. Tifa stopped with him. Before them, row of glowing incubators, sealed metal pods with round glass windows that glowed with mako. Beyond the incubators, a door with JENOVA in steel letters above. Stairs, cutting between the incubators leading to the door.

Bodies were on the ground between the door and them. Tifa had known to expect her own, but it was worse than she had imagined. She was at the bottom of the stairs. Between the blood, the paleness of her skin, and her stillness, Tifa would have assumed that she was dead.

Another body. It was above Tifa's, stretched out along the stairs as if it had been thrown. Bent, broken, and bloodied. A large man with an unmistakable mess of black, spiked hair. Unmoving. Zack Fair. SOLDIER, First Class. The only one who had accompanied Sephiroth when Shinra came to Nibelheim five years ago.

Cloud still did not move or speak. His eyes were fixed on the bodies before him, eyes dilated, breathing heavily through his nose. Tifa felt something building in him. Not emotions this time, but something else. Knowledge. The truth. A revelation.

He dropped Tifa's hand, forming fists at his side. His eyes darted up and down the stairs, stopping at Tifa's body, Zack's, and the door stamped Jenova. Up the stairs. Jenova. Down the stairs. Zack. The bottom. Tifa. And back up. He seemed to be stuck in a loop. Tifa took a step back.

"Cloud…" Tifa's throat was dry. Her heart thudded. "Cloud, where…?"

Where were you Cloud? She could not bring herself to say it. But she had gotten his attention. His head twitched, his focus pulled away from the stairs and the bodies.

"I saw everything," he said, without looking at her.

Every inch of Cloud was taut. His neck muscles twitched. Seemingly outside of his own volition, his head moved in the direction of the mako-filled pods. A shudder traveled the length of his body.

How, Cloud? Tifa throat felt as though it were closing, and she found herself unable to ask the question. How did you see everything? She could only watch Cloud as his body jerked and strained. He seemed on the edge of snapping – in half or back together, Tifa could not tell.

A flash. Green and sickly, reeking of mako and corruption. An awful voice rang in Tifa's ears. Sephiroth's voice, from days prior. Cloud's memory of them, haunting them.

He is a failed experiment. A puppet. Put together piece by piece by Hojo five years ago, with Jenova cells and mako.

The voice and words from the Northern Crater, where Cloud had been broken. Cloud cringed away from them, his hands covering his ears, but there was no escaping them. The words echoed in the metal chamber, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Another flash. This time images came with it. Unlike the previous memories Cloud and Tifa had witnessed together, these were blurred and erratic. The same, sickly green haze obscured them, but it was easy enough to make out the scene. Sephiroth, in this very room. Sword in hand. He slashed at the tubing connected to the incubators.

Hojo repurposed them as incubators – cages for animals – infused with mako. All to birth a new breed of monster. But he didn't stop at animals. Oh no, there were other subjects.

An upward slash of Sephiroth's sword, rending the incubator in half. From it, a creature slid onto the floor, in a pool of mako. Something between a man and a monster. Terrible. Wrong. Twisted. Sephiroth's head fell into his hands.

Could it be…that I was created the same way? Am I the same as these monsters?

Tifa recalled the incident from Cloud's story in Kalm. Sephiroth's unraveling in this very room. At the time, she had been focused on the most pressing issue to her – the fact that Cloud had not been there.

But she felt the poignancy of the words now. Why they had come back to plague Cloud. The fear they invoked. That he was not real. Not human. Not Cloud. A monster.

Cloud seemed to be glitching, and the images, the surrounding room, his memories glitched with him. The room came in and out of focus. Sephiroth's voice wavered between crisp and fuzzy, like a badly tuned radio. Cloud's hands shook as they gripped his head, as if he were trying to hold himself together.

Cloud! Tifa wanted to scream it but found that she could not. Like the memory, Tifa felt as though she were fading in and out of existence herself. As though in losing his grip on himself, Cloud was allowing Tifa to slip away from him as well. Your voice can't reach him now. These words, Tifa heard in her own mind. An echo of her own memories, Sephiroth's voice taunting her just as it taunted Cloud.

Tifa tried to move, to reach Cloud, but her body felt insubstantial. It was like being back in the Northern Crater, in Sephiroth's illusion. Locked in her body. Cloud falling apart before her, and nothing Tifa could do to help him.

Fight it, Cloud. Tifa screamed the words in her head. Begged him with all her being, though she could not speak the words to counter the ones that tormented him now. The words may be real, but that doesn't mean they're true. We've come this far…Cloud, please.

Just then, through the static, Sephiroth's voice came again. This time the words were crisp and clear, cutting as sharp as his blade. Cloud flinched at them, as if they were physical blows that pummeled him. His body was bent backwards like a bow, every muscle tense. His hand was hung backwards, still between his hands, his teeth clenched and bared.

A failed experiment. A puppet, made of Jenova cells, mako, and memories.

Tifa could almost see the sneer that had accompanied the words.

He does not love. He cannot grieve. Truly, he is not even alive in the same way that you are. How could such a being understand what it means to die?

Those words, spoken to Tifa in mock pity. As she had collapsed to the ground, crying and questioning everything. Words meant to drive home Sephiroth's point. That Cloud was a monster. One who killed but did not feel.

Is what you're feeling even real? It's time you stop pretending, Cloud.

Sorrow. Anger. Regret. Guilt. Nothing but empty words to you.

"No!"

Cloud screamed the words. His body snapped upright. The memory slammed back into focus. The incubators. The stairs. The door with JENOVA above it. Zack's body on the stairs. And at Cloud's feet, Tifa, bloodied and still.

Tifa, too, had slammed back into herself. She gasped at the sudden solidity of her body and made to move toward Cloud. But something stopped her. They were not alone.

Cloud had not been the only one to scream the word. A helmeted soldier was beside him, hunched with the pain of an unseen injury and covered in soot. Blood stained his uniform. The soldier and Cloud had screamed in unison, a guttural scream that raised the hair on the back of Tifa's neck.

The scream had been human. Undeniably and heart wrenchingly so. Full of grief, love, sorrow, regret, and guilt. All of those wretched, human emotions imbued in just one word, a single, shattering cry.

Cloud and Tifa both watched the soldier as he took in the scene at the bottom of the stairs. Though Cloud was breathing heavily, the tension had left his body. There was a look on his face almost like relief, like he had found something he had been certain was lost forever.

There was a sword on the ground. Zack's buster sword. The soldier unfroze and grabbed it. Though he had seemed to be crippled with some injury upon entering, his body showed no sign of it now. He held the sword aloft and charged up the stairs, determined, never fumbling a step.

Cloud and Tifa followed behind, running to keep up. By the time they reached the top of the stairs, the soldier had already entered the room that housed Jenova. She was large and otherworldly, encased in a tube, lit with glowing fluid. Gloved hands pressed against the glass. Sephiroth stood before the tube, standing on the connecting pipe.

His body spasmed as the soldier impaled him from behind, ramming the buster sword to his back. The glass cracked before him as the tip of the sword ran him through.

"My home…Mom…Tifa…"

The soldier gasped the words. His voice was ragged with pain, as if he were the one who had just been run through with the blade rather than Sephiroth.

"Give them back!"

His voice broke on the words. It was a childish demand, nearly sobbed. Tifa understood it. The complete and incomprehensible loss of that night. The instinctual rejection and denial. The way that she had felt when she had finally woken. How she had wanted to go back to sleep, to wake up and find herself at home, safe again.

The soldier backed away and Sephiroth slumped against the glass. He turned his back to Sephiroth, head hanging and shoulders heaving as his breath came in gasps.

"I hero worshipped you," he said. "I wanted to be like you…"

He shook his head, disgusted. His body shuddered, fists working at his sides. He seemed to be jumping out of his own skin and he lifted his hands to his helmet, fingers frantic and clumsy against it. Finally, he managed to loosen it and in one swift movement, he lifted it off his head.

It was Cloud.

Of course it's Cloud, Tifa thought, stepping closer to look at him. There you are.

Cloud, at sixteen years old. His hair was a bit longer than Cloud's was now, but the ponytail he had as boy was gone. He had grown tall since that night at the water tower, much taller than Tifa had been at that age. There was still a softness to the roundness of his cheeks and the line of his jaw.

And his eyes. They were shy, clear blue eyes. The same eyes that had followed Tifa all of her childhood. Gentle and untouched by mako.

"It's you," Tifa said softly.

She turned around to look at Cloud who had also been studying his younger self. The relief was still evident on his face, but nervousness touched his expression as well as he turned his eyes toward Tifa.

"This is me," he confirmed. "I…never made it as a SOLDIER."

Tifa continued studying the younger Cloud, unable to look away. Cloud was here. He had been in Nibelheim the entire time. He had been so close. He had been watching over her. Tifa's chest felt tight, full of too many emotions and questions to sort out at once.

"How –" she started, then stopped. "Why –"

Words were not coming to her as they should, but Cloud understood her all the same.

"I left Nibelheim saying I was going to join SOLDIER." He shook his head. "I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to see anyone."

"Even me?"

Cloud made a choked sound, something between laughter and disbelief. It pulled Tifa's attention away from sixteen-year-old Cloud.

"Especially you," he said.

Tifa understood. After what she had seen from Cloud's childhood, she understood. But still, it hurt. Her face must have shown it. Cloud sighed, his face turning serious.

"Tifa…"

He took a step closer, reaching out a hand. Tifa took it.

"I wanted to come back here as a SOLDIER, but instead I…" He poked his boot at the tossed aside helmet by their feet. "And when I got here, you were so…You were…"

Fumbling for words, Cloud closed his eyes. Tifa did as well.

Tifa pushed past her father in the town square, jogging lightly, her dark hair swinging beneath a cowboy hat. Her father stuttered protests behind her, but Tifa ignored them. She stopped in front of Sephiroth, straight-backed and confident.

"Good morning, sir! I'll be your guide for today!"

Despite her confidence, she was small and seemed especially so in front of Sephiroth. She had to tilt her head backwards to look him in the face. And in her matching skirt and vest, with the beads in her hair and colorful bracelets on her wrist, she looked so young. She was pretty. She was undeniably cute. Zack was incredulous.

"You're our guide?!"

Standing before the two towering SOLDIERs, Tifa was undeterred.

"I sure am! You can ask anyone around here. I'm the best there is."

She grinned, placing her hands on her hips. When she tilted her head, Cloud's chest clenched.

"You were so much like you used to be, when we were little."

Tifa thought about the memories they had sorted through together. The assured way she had once reached for what she wanted. The bold, small girl she had once been. She had lost track of that girl when her mother got sick, but Tifa had found bits of her once more after all the boys had left the village.

"I…spent a lot of time alone after everyone left the village. It was quiet. It gave me time to think," Tifa explained slowly.

She had been lonely, certainly. But from the quiet had come a sort of contentedness. With fewer people to please, fewer voices telling her what to do, Tifa had been able to hear her own voice again. And then Zangan came.

"The martial arts and training with Zangan, it helped me too. Reminded me I was strong."

Cloud nodded.

"You were," he told her. "You were strong and brave and you were so…"

Tifa, titling her head and smiling sassily at Sephiroth and Zack.

Tifa kneeling near Cloud on the mountain path, after he had pushed her to safety from the attacking monster. A smile on her face, a genuine one that lit it up. "Thank you!"

Tifa, outside the reactor. "You better keep me safe!" Said close to Cloud's face, her hands on her hips, a scowl on her face. Cloud had shrunk beneath that look at the same time as his heart pounded.

Each time, words stuck in Cloud's throat. A strange, sweeping feeling in his stomach. He could not possibly speak to her, much less tell her who he was. She was so strong and brave and beautiful and he was just –

A failure, really.

"Cloud…"

Tifa clasped his hands tightly. She tilted her head to try and catch his eyes, which were now looking at the ground. He shook his head dejectedly but lifted his head. His face was full of all the emotions that had filled his shout just moments before, when his true self had appeared.

Grief, love, sorrow, regret, and guilt.

"In the end, I wasn't brave enough or strong enough," he said.

Too slow. Too weak. Too late.

Before Tifa could say anything, the memory resumed around them. Cloud, in his uniform, helmet now removed, was leaving the room, moving with a sudden urgency.

They followed him down the stairs.

At the bottom, Tifa had not moved. She was laying awkwardly, an arm twisted beneath her. Blood pooled on the floor. Gone was the vibrant energy packed into her small body, her confident stance, and bright smile. She was like a broken doll. Tossed away like garbage.

Tifa remembered the shock of the wound, though trauma had dulled the extent of the pain. One of the last things she recalled before losing consciousness was the impact of the steps against her injured body as she fell down them. The sense of being abandoned, discarded. Cold, dying, and so very alone.

She watched as Cloud knelt next to her prone form, placing a hand on the ground beside her. He paused, turning his gloved palm up. Blood now stained it. For a moment he stared at it, stunned. Then, his face crumpled.

The wound. All the blood. Tifa might have also assumed it was too late.

Carefully, Cloud worked an arm beneath Tifa's shoulders and shifted her into his arms, his other arm looping beneath her knees. He stood slowly, cradling her against him as he moved her body away from the stairs.

He knelt back down in front of the incubators, placing Tifa to rest on the ground with her back propped against them. Still, he did not let go of her. A glove hand lightly brushed the hair from her face and lingered there, cupping her cheek like it was something precious.

Tifa knelt on the other side of young Cloud where he was holding her. She looked between herself, still unmoving and pale, and Cloud's despairing face. They were both so young. Between the two of them, so many unspoken longings and unrealized dreams.

She wondered how things might have been for them, had this night not happened. Perhaps Cloud would have built up the courage to take off his helmet. To say hello. For all Tifa's boldness at fifteen, she would not have known what to say to him. Together, they would have been shy and fumbling and sweet.

After this moment, Tifa had not experienced sweetness again for some time. She had awoken to a harsh reality. One that threatened violence and destitution. Where she had been used, cheated, and forced to survive on her own. In those years, she had forgotten that she had ever had such gentle dreams.

Cloud's hopes and dreams had been gentle too. A sealed up, secret wish. Such tender wishes. To be a hero to Tifa. To be brave enough to talk to her, and strong enough to save her. Instead, the hero he idolized had destroyed everything he knew and loved. The girl he wished to protect was lifeless in his arms.

Their dreams were shattered in one night. Brutality in place of the soft hopes they had carefully guarded.

And yet, they had this one moment together. It was not what either of them had wished for, but Tifa was grateful for it all the same. She realized she was crying.

"You came," she said. "You kept our promise."

Cloud hung his head. "Sorry I was too late."

Tifa stood and moved toward him. Cloud's brow furrowed at the tears on her cheeks. She reached up to smooth the expression with her fingers and cup his cheek, just as tenderly as his younger self caressed hers.

"You were there for me," she insisted. "You've always been there for me when I needed you most."

"I failed you," he whispered. "I'm no hero."

Tifa smiled. "If you're not a hero, then I don't know what one is."

Tifa could see herself reflected in Cloud's eyes as well as a spark of something new. He was considering a possibility. A possibility that, perhaps, Tifa might actually mean what she was telling him. That it might be true.

Boots thudded on the stairs behind them, the steps irregular and dragging. It broke the tension between them and together, they both turned to look.

Slowly and painfully, Sephiroth was leaving the chamber at the top of the stairs. His sword nearly dragged on the floor behind him. His grip on it seemed weakened. Under his arm, he held something dripping and horrible. A head. Jenova's.

"Cloud…"

It was Zack's voice. He was still alive.

" Finish…Sephiroth…off…"

The words sounded like they took all of Zack's strength to form. Young Cloud made eye contact with him from across the room, where his body was still stretched out along the stairs. He gave Zack a firm, determined nod.

Cloud placed Tifa's body against one of the metal pods, propping her shoulders against it. With care, he adjusted her head. He gave her one last look, full of sorrow and regret, before standing and reaching for the buster sword he had set aside.

Sword in hand, he stood at the bottom of the stairs facing Sephiroth.

"Sephiroth!"

His scream was still rife with emotion, but now it was anger that predominated. More than anger, rage. The power of it echoed in the large room. It stopped Sephiroth in his tracks, his face rippling with outrage.

Young Cloud charged up the stairs, launching himself into the air. Sephiroth raised his sword to counter his attack and in the air, their weapons clashed. Time was suspended for a moment as, teeth gritted, they pitted their strengths against one another.

Even injured, Sephiroth managed to outmuscle Cloud. With a jerk of his arms, he flung him back into the chamber. He reentered it in a leisurely manner that contrasted with the fury on his face. Cloud and Tifa raced up the stairs behind them, to bear witness to the final moment of their confrontation.

They entered the room just as Sephiroth pierced Cloud through the chest.

He might have left it at that, but his anger had been fueled. Sephiroth was enraged at Cloud's unexpected defiance. An unranked soldier from a small, dying town – a nobody – had stabbed him in the back and dared to challenge him again now.

Grimacing against his own injuries, but seemingly determined to punish Cloud for his insolence, Sephiroth lifted Cloud into the air, his impaled body hanging from his sword.

" Don't…test….me!" Sephiroth gritted.

At first, Cloud's head hung. But then he lifted it. There was no pain on his face. Only wrath. So unlike Sephiroth prideful anger. Cloud's was a righteous anger, born of grief and love. A strange look crossed Sephiroth's face. An uncertain one that might have even been called fear.

Cloud gripped the sword where it had pierced his chest. He lifted, and as if in slow motion, Cloud and Sephiroth switched positions. Cloud's feet landed on the ground and Sephiroth was lifted into the air.

" It can't be!"

Sephiroth's surprise and his underestimation of Cloud, ultimately were his downfall. With one powerful motion, Cloud jerked the blade, flinging Sephiroth against the wall. The chamber was fraught with open wiring. It sparked and sizzled as Sephiroth collided with it. He fell, disappearing into the mako below with Jenova's head and his blade.

The injured Cloud collapsed to his knees, then fell sideways.

"So that's what happened…" Tifa whispered.

Cloud looked down at himself. Now that the blade had dislodged, he was bleeding profusely. His body shook and his eyes rolled back into his head. He was going into shock. Losing consciousness.

"I…don't know what happened next," Cloud said slowly.

"It's okay, Cloud." Tifa placed a hand on his back. "One thing at a time. We survived. Against all odds, we both did. The important thing is that you know who you are."

On the floor, young Cloud's eyes had closed. His form was beginning to fade. In fact, the entire room was fading around them. The memory had served its purpose. As sixteen-year-old Cloud dissolved, Tifa's Cloud seemed to grow more defined. The last piece had fallen into place.

"I know who I am," Cloud confirmed.

With that, the memory disappeared, and they were somewhere else entirely.

They were back in the strange landscape where Tifa had first found Cloud, in the nexus of it all. Winding paths surrounded them that Tifa now knew lead to different cores of Cloud's being. The shift in their surroundings made Tifa's knees buckle, but she managed to catch her balance.

Cloud collapsed entirely.

"Cloud!"

Tifa knelt at his side, grabbing for his shoulders. His hands were at his head again, eyes scrunched shut. But he allowed her to help him to a seated position.

"Cloud?" Tifa said, in a softer tone.

He braced one hand on the ground, holding onto Tifa with the other. After a moment, he opened his eyes and blinked at her, a dazed looked on his face.

"Uh…Tifa?"

It brought Tifa back to another day, which now felt like a lifetime ago. A train station in the slums. A man collapsed on the ground. Blue eyes meeting hers, then saying her name like it was an answer he had been searching for.

But this time, Tifa knew him just as well as he knew her.

"Oh, Cloud. It's really you, isn't it?"

Tifa was smiling, but her cheeks felt damp. She was crying again.

Cloud kept his eyes fixed on her, still taking it all in. Tifa studied him as well and found him both the same and changed. He was the Cloud from her childhood, the boy she had always known, but now understood better than ever. He was also the Cloud she had gotten to know over the past several weeks, after finding him in Midgar.

But he was now someone else too. A full person who knew who he was and how he felt. Someone that Tifa still did not know completely, but who she would now get the chance to meet.

"Yeah, Tifa." Though he still seemed fragile, he managed to smile back. "We finally meet again."

He shook his head, as if he could not believe she was really there. Then, he said her name again. Cloud said it like a discovery, one he wanted to savor over and over. Once he started, he seemed unable to stop.

"Tifa?"

He reached for her cheek, fingers brushing against her tears.

"Tifa."

He cupped his hands on either side of her face.

" Tifa..."

Suddenly, it was too much for Tifa, and she let out a single sob, all the worry and doubt and fear leaving her body in one, gasping cry.

Cloud reached for her and just like that they were in each other's arms. They fell into one another, each pulling the other close. Bodies pressed together, hands grasping. It was as if they could not get close enough or hold on tight enough to convince themselves they had truly found each other again.

"You stupid jerk," Tifa cried, her muffled against Cloud's shoulder. "I was worried sick!"

"I'm sorry. Tifa, I'm sorry."

He whispered the words against her temple. Tifa was shaking with emotion of it all, breathing into the solidity of his body against hers. His arms were strong around her, his scent and the feel of him so familiar that it was like coming home.

Tifa fingers dug into Cloud's back and she felt his arms flex around her. They were holding each other as close as they possibly could, so tight they could barely breathe. Their chests heaved against one another, and Cloud's breath was warm on her neck as he dipped his face into it. And still, it was not enough.

"Cloud…"

She shifted, and Cloud loosened his hold on her immediately, moving his hands to her shoulders and pulling back to create some space. Tifa moved her hands to his torso, grabbing onto his shirt to keep him from moving too far. She leaned away, just far enough to see his face.

There was uncertainty on his. Vulnerability. Tifa had seen everything. The confused images in his mind when he still could not make sense of what was real. The things he was ashamed of that he had pushed down so deeply that he had accepted a different reality. The soft secrets of his heart. The way he felt about her since he was only a boy.

This is me. I understand if you don't want it.

Cloud and Tifa always had a way of understanding one another without speaking. But especially now, especially here, Tifa could hear what he was thinking as if he were whispering the thoughts into her ear.

I do want it. I do. All if it, every bit that makes you Cloud.

Tifa told him, not with words, but with her hands that she slid from his chest to his face, tracing it with the tips of her fingers. She told him with her eyes as she leaned in, keeping them on his until she was too close, and they drifted close. Tifa told him with her lips as she kissed him, first along his jaw, then the corner of his mouth, and then finally on his lips.

It had all the sweetness of the first time they kissed, but none of the reservation. Breath mingling, mouths opening, lips wandering then finding their way back again. Cloud's hands moved from Tifa's shoulders to tangle in her hair, tilting her head to kiss her more deeply.

This time, it was Cloud who paused to pull back and look at Tifa. His face was full of awe as he looked at her, and Tifa wondered if her cheeks were just as flushed as his. He gave his head a little shake. As if he could not help it, his lips were parting again, his eyes closing as moved to kiss her again.

He brushed his lips against hers lightly, so lightly at first, until Tifa's hands were tugging at him, pulling his teasing mouth more firmly to her own. She felt him smiling against her lips.

It was then that Tifa had a strange thought. He always kisses me like that after we've been apart for a while. That's how Cloud always kisses me when he comes home.

The thought was almost odd enough for Tifa to pull away, but as soon as it came into her mind, images came too, and she was swept into them.

Tifa's back was against a wall. Cloud rested one hand against the wall and the other reached for her waist, his hand warm and familiar. He smelled like the road, a combination of fresh air and fuel. Trapped between Cloud and the wall, she suffered his light, teasing kiss until she fisted her hands into his shirt, and he pressed closer.

The sound of the door surprised Tifa. The kids were at school and the bar was not open yet. And Cloud was not due back for another day. Yet, it was Cloud who strode in, grinning at the look on Tifa's face. When she asked him why he came back early, he did not reply, but leaned over the bar and kissed her so gently she sighed.

The sofa was comfortable and warm, and the baby on Tifa's chest was fast asleep. Tifa knew she should get up, but she could not bring herself to move. She must have dozed off, though, because next thing she knew, she awoke with a chill. Cloud had brought in the cold night air with him and there was an amused look on his face as he stroked the baby's head. Before he left, Tifa had declared boldly that it was time their baby got used to sleeping in her crib. At Tifa's sheepish look, he only kissed her, so soft at first, like he always did after being away.

Cloud broke away with a gasp. The images stopped.

Tifa had a split second to process the pained way he held his head before she gasped as well, her hands flying to temples. Pain. Sharp and wrong. Her head felt wrung out, like it had absorbed something it should not have and was then emptied like a sponge. Even as the initial intensity faded, Tifa continued to hold her head, trying to shake off the strangeness of the feeling.

"Tifa? Tifa, are you okay?"

Cloud voice was concerned, but he did not try to touch her. Slowly, Tifa lowered her hands. He seemed paler, his face worried.

"I think so," Tifa replied, though she was not truly sure.

"There are voices," he said. "And I think…I think I saw something."

Tifa nodded. She had seen something too, though now all she could remember was the aftermath of pain.

"We're in the Lifestream, aren't we?" she asked slowly.

It seemed like a ridiculous thing to forget. But now, they had been here so long, it was almost difficult to remember that there was something else. All of their friends waiting for them. A whole world in danger. A battle to be fought.

"We can't stay here," Cloud said. "I think…we're not really here."

Tifa shook her head. She did not understand.

Cloud looked thoughtful. There was wisdom in his face that had not been there before. Tifa recalled suddenly that Cloud had been exposed to more of the Lifestream than she had. That he had been trapped here, all this time.

He reached out a hand to Tifa and she placed her hand in his. It was a coordinated dance by now. They closed their eyes together.

It was not like before, when they held hands and traveled through memories with ease. This time, Tifa had to strain against her own mind. Where am I? Where are we? Please, don't let us be lost.

But then, she felt something. Liquid, all around her. A brush of a hand close to her own. She was drifting, underwater, and Cloud was nearby. Neither of them were moving. Tifa could not see anything because her eyes were closed.

Time was different there. Though here with Cloud, it felt as though hours had passed, if not lifetimes, somehow Tifa could tell that their bodies had only been missing for minutes at most. But a couple minutes was all it would take. They were not breathing.

If they did not get out there, Cloud and Tifa were going to die.

"We have to go back."

Cloud's voice was urgent, and Tifa felt a sudden surge of fear.

"How?" she asked.

"I think we just have to want to."

He sounded confident, and he squeezed her hand, signaling her to close her eyes again.

Tifa thought about life outside the Lifestream. How time moved forward, and everything unfolded in order. Memories, good and bad, stayed in the past. She thought about her entire, unknown future that she wanted to experience for herself, rather than see in flashes that she could not seem to remember. Tifa remembered their friends, that they would be waiting there for them.

Without opening her eyes, Tifa whispered. "Let's go back to everyone."

"Yeah," Cloud replied. "Come on, Tifa. Let's go home."