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They’re at the beach, the sun on their skins, the ocean at their feet. They clasp hands and watch for the coming tide. When the waves crash against them, they leap. She hears their laughter, sees their smiling faces, and then she thinks — this can’t last.
—
She feels guilty about it for the rest of the day, absentmindedly packing their things into the back of the truck. The kids are running in circles and shouting excuses to stay. A voice cuts through the din, or at least it tries. He doesn’t seem to reach her this time.
“Tifa,” he calls again.
She comes to attention, only to collide with the corner of a suitcase nearby. She reaches for her head, but he’s already laid his hand over the wound.
“Are you alright?” He asks like it’s the end of the world, but for once, it’s not the end of the world.
His shoulders relax when he realizes the only thing injured is her pride. He barely suppresses his laughter. She’ll let him have it this time.
“Ready to go?”
She nods, “Once we wrangle Denzel and Marlene.”
“Already done,” he announces with the cheesiest, most self-satisfied smile. It almost takes her breath away.
And sure enough, there they were, sitting patiently in the backseat, silently waiting, keeping their hands to themselves.
“Cloud…what did you promise them?”
“Nothing they won’t forget in a couple of days,” he declares, steering her towards the passenger seat. “Come on. We should get a move on if we want to get home before dark.”
He smiles so easily these days. Not that strained line back when he was pretending to be someone else or the pained grimace from just months ago when he was hiding a disease without a cure. No, they’re big, open, and honestly, kind of goofy. It’s like he’s making up for lost time, and well, he was, and well, he is, but well, it’s fine.
The engine revs. Cloud adjusts the rear-view mirror. Even from her angle, Tifa can see Denzel and Marlene staring back at him with such devious intensity. Whatever he thinks transpired, they are absolutely not going to let him forget it. The color drains from his face. He sheepishly clears his throat. “Uh, so, Tifa, I might have —”
She shushes him gently. “Let’s not spoil this. It can wait until we get home.”
And they’re off, Costa Del Sol left in the dust, the whole car laughing at his expense. She looks outside, and the sun is starting to set. It’s almost a perfect day.
Then that thought again, this time in a voice that doesn’t sound like her own.
He’ll leave again. This can’t last.
—
He’s been taking fewer jobs lately, not that there’s many to turn down. The focus has been on rebuilding. Special deliveries are luxuries few can afford at the moment, and it’ll be a while before things return to normal. Though in a world careening from one catastrophe to the next, does normal even exist? How many times can the same people be broken down until they no longer try?
He always makes it home before dinner these days, camps out at a back table with his two little assistants at his side. How she longs to join them, but she can never find the time. Her business has been booming. It’s crisis-proof, or rather, crisis-led. She wonders if that’s another thing she ought to feel guilty about, literally profiting from the misery of others. But then she’ll see them in the corner and think — she’s got four mouths to feed. Maybe this one she can let slide.
Still, he makes time for her, after the kids are put to bed. She learns and relearns every inch of him, all the desperate and reverent ways he can say her name. Some weary nights, she just lays her head on his chest. He feels so solid and stable, and for a moment, all her doubts are put to rest.
Then dawn breaks, and they return. Her arms are still wrapped around him. One day, she knows she’ll hold him too tight, and — that voice again — He’s going to run. He always does.
—
Denzel is scrutinizing his science textbook one afternoon. They’re learning about the immune system, which seems advanced for a kid of just eight, but what does she know? It’s been nearly ten years since she was last in a classroom and has felt like longer still.
Is it any wonder he’s so interested in the subject? So many years of his short life were ravaged by the disease, and yet he lived long enough to see the cure. What a miracle it was. What a miracle it must have seemed. She can almost picture him now, with his long white coat, but no, that’ll be years, decades from now. Thinking that far ahead is nothing but an invitation for heartbreak.
His brows knit in concentration. He has something to say, she thinks, but he’ll wait until Cloud returns to say it.
“The Lifestream…” he starts, and she almost gasps in surprise. “…is kind of like the planet’s immune system, isn’t it?”
Tifa considers this for a moment. First there was Meteor, and now Geostigma too. When all seemed lost, the Lifestream came roaring to their rescue.
She nods assertively. “I think you’re right.”
What a remarkably astute observation. Her heart wells up with pride. Oh, what she would give for their world to be the one that he deserves.
“That means we’ll be alright, doesn’t it? No matter what happens, the Lifestream will be on our side,” he asks with an expectant smile.
For a moment, she doesn’t know what to say. She feels crushed with shame. He’s experienced more loss in his eight brief years than she has her entire life, and yet he hasn’t succumbed to the same fatalism that plagues her every waking thought.
His smile fades as he starts to wonder if he’s said something dumb, something wrong. Finally, Tifa playfully ruffles his hair as she returns his smile. She’s gotta get that in while he still lets her.
If he can have hope, she will too.
—
The news reports are becoming hard to ignore. A new breed of monster is on the prowl. She had dismissed it as sensationalism at first, but now the rumors run amok among the patrons of her bar. It’s all anyone can talk about.
Cloud drums his fingers on the just cleaned countertop, leaving marks. Her last customer has finally left for the night.
“You should go,” Tifa says, before he can find the words.
“How’d you — “ he scratches the back of his head. “Reeve called today. It’s probably nothing…but better safe than sorry.”
She nods, still looking away. “And better you than that stuffed cat of his.”
He chuckles, but they both know it sounds a bit strained. “The pay is surprisingly good too. No need to worry about putting the delivery service on hold.”
Again, he hesitates, even though she already knows what he’s going to say.
“The only thing is, depending on what we find, I don’t know how long I’ll be away.”
She answers quickly, “Cloud, we’ll be fine,” turning her attention to a particularly stubborn stain. “Really, you should go. I think everyone will sleep more peacefully with you on the case.”
“I’ll call if anything happens. No, even if nothing happens, I promise, I’ll call.”
He reaches for the hand wiping down the spot where his had been. She finally meets his eyes. “You should do something fun with Denzel and Marlene before you leave. They’re going to miss you.”
A long beat. He brings her hand to his chest. Even now, she’s terrified to say it out loud. “I’m going to miss you too.”
—
He keeps his word. Every night, after dinner, she puts him on speaker as the kids rush through recounting their school days to hear him regale them with tales of his heroics.
He calls her back after she puts them to bed and confesses all the bits he embellished for their sake, which is most of it. There’s really nothing to worry about. He wishes he was home with them. He wishes he had stayed.
And she knows, she knows, she knows that he says this for her sake, but she likes that he tries. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about it until you saw it for yourself.”
The line is dead for a moment, and she thinks she’s done it. She thinks she’s said the wrong thing. And then she hears,
“You’re right.”
And then he laughs. “And I would have been an idiot.”
—
He calls unexpectedly the next afternoon. She answers on the first ring. “Is everything okay?”
But it’s no emergency at all. He just missed her. She doesn’t know what to say. Not much has transpired in the hours since they last spoke, but that’s okay. He doesn’t need her to talk. He just wants her near. So she leaves the phone on while she’s chopping up vegetables, rearranging the chairs. She hears the rumbling of the engine. She hears him clear his throat, and she smiles.
Then she sees him, sitting casually in the corner of the bar. Of course, it was his voice. How could she not know?
“Do you really think this is something you deserve?”
She nearly drops the knife.
“Tifa? Tifa, is everything alright?”
And, he’s gone.
Of course, there was nothing there. Of course, it’s only Cloud on the other line. She’ll be fine, of course. She’s — “I’m fine.”
—
It’s always just outside her window, though she’s managed to avoid it most days, the ruins where the city of Midgar used to be. It’s impossible today.
Without Cloud as her go-between, she spends the bulk of her time procuring ingredients on the outskirts of Edge, and the only farm that stocks her herbs happens to be found on the boundary where Sector 7 began.
She thanks the merchant and fills her burlap sacks, and then she hears a voice. No, first she smells a stench, the rotten air. It almost feels like home. The sky is covered with steel.
They are as she remembered, but not those crystalline visions in her memories, ageless and trapped in time. No, they are young and bright and bursting, bursting with life. Gone are their red headbands, those chintzy pieces of armor. Her hair is down. His face is long. He’s lost some of that baby weight. But, she’s still got that theatrical lilt in her smile, he’s still got that pensive look in his eyes, and he’s secure in the knowledge that he’s more than just along for the ride.
Arm in arm, they are cavorting, like they don’t have a care in the world, like they’re not carrying the weight of so many lost lives.
She tries to reach them, and then she sees him in the corner of her eye, his cat who caught the canary smile. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t need to. They pass right through.
“Miss, are you alright?”
The car speeds right past her, nicking a strand of hair. The merchant pulled her back just in time. Tifa thanks her and excuses herself. When she looks up, the sky is blue.
—
Cloud doesn’t call that night.
—
Reeve tries her first thing in the morning, before the kids are out of bed.
Cloud had been knocked out by a particularly powerful, though decidedly non-lethal spell from a monster they had been tracking. He was calling for them in his sleep all night. Rather than wait for him to wake and explain, Reeve thought he would take the initiative and apologize.
“How bad is it really?” She asks, trying to keep the suspicion from creeping into her voice.
She hears his barely perceptible sigh. Is that how they all see them? As something fragile, always about to break.
“How much has he told you?”
So she tells him, and he punctuates each sentence with a series of assertive grunts.
“That was our thinking initially, before we analyzed their remains. We couldn’t believe it at first, but then their behavior began to make more sense.”
He waits a beat. She’s already thinking the worst.
“Based on their chemical composition, drawn from the elements in the atmosphere, we’ve had to conclude that they are not from this time. In fact, given the amount of Mako in their system, they could only be from two years ago.”
Meteor. Sephiroth. The kids are running upstairs.
“Tifa, are you still there?”
She exhales. “I think you need to get your machines checked.”
He laughs mirthlessly. “Perhaps you’re right.”
She can hear the water running, the hurried chatter above. She wonders how she can end this conversation without being impolite.
“Before I let you go, I wanted to apologize again.”
“There’s really no need. He can take care of himself.”
“Not just that. For even asking this of him. For keeping him away.”
“I —” she starts. “I’m glad you did. He’d grow restless otherwise.”
Silence again. What does it mean? What does it matter? It’s not as if it’s his job to soothe her endless anxieties.
The phone rings again. She smiles ruefully. “I’ve gotta go, Reeve. He’s calling on the other line.”
—
Cloud is back the next day, before their nightly call. The kids are still at school. The bar is nearly empty, just a few stragglers finishing up a late lunch.
He stands in the doorway, clothes covered with dust, frame haloed by the sun. His hair seems a bit longer, his cheeks a little hollow. She can hardly remember the last time they were parted for so long.
No, of course she remembers, but that was something on which she’d rather not dwell.
All of a sudden, their usual “Welcome back,” “I’m home,” doesn’t feel like enough, but what she wants to do feels so laughably childish. So he’s been away for a couple of weeks. It’s not like he was at war, at least not yet.
While she hesitates, Cloud closes the gap.
—
He helps clear up after last call. She’s drying the dishes. He’s stacking the chairs. They’ve hardly exchanged a word the entire night. Usually, they never need to, but this time, there’s so much hanging in the air. He’s been hiding time-traveling monsters. She’s been hiding visions of a madman. And somehow his is the one that’s going to sound less absurd.
Last plate done. Before she can even broach the subject, he tells her everything. Or everything he knows, which, he admits with frustration, isn’t all that much.
“Is it him?” she asks finally, with trepidation. The wrong words, the wrong tone, and he may break.
But instead, he smiles. “Hard to say, though I’d almost be relieved. Sephiroth we know how to deal with.”
She’s stunned. Not even a year ago, the name alone would have made his blood run cold. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You know what they say? Fourth time’s the charm.”
And she laughs, not because it was particularly funny — he’s not a particularly funny guy. She laughs because it’s him.
“Anything unusual happen while I was away? I know it’s hard to live up to time-traveling monsters, but well, I want to hear it.”
Here’s her chance. His eyes are so open and forgiving. She should tell him. She would hate it if he didn’t, if the shoe was on the other foot. And that’s what he did, wasn’t it? Geostigma, the Forgotten City, and now…she completely understands why. They really are the same, aren’t they? It almost makes her laugh. She feels closer to him now than ever before all the while she’s trying to push him away.
His eyes change, and she finds her escape. “Cloud?”
“Actually…I didn’t tell you everything.”
Ah, of course.
“Reeve was saying that if it was him, then he would probably come after me. And if that was the case, it would be better for me to be somewhere I could be monitored, where I could keep the people I cared about safe,” and he hangs his head low as if he’s committed the most heinous crime, “but I just couldn’t do it.”
Now she really has to laugh.
“I know I should have talked to you first. I know it’s not a decision I should have made on my own. I know I was being selfish. I know, but I —”
She kisses him, as if it could make her own fears go away.
—
It gets worse, or at least it gets weirder. Firestorms swirl in the sky — like the days before Meteor — but they always seem to disappear before they touch the ground, only to reappear somewhere else, halfway around the world.
It’s like this one morning, when they pull open the curtains. The storms are just outside, hovering over a deserted patch of land. They stand by the window, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. There’s a strange kind of beauty, Tifa thinks, if she could forget their destructive power for a while.
Cloud puts an arm around her shoulder. That moment again when she steps outside of herself. From a distance, from far away, this may look like a perfectly normal, domestic scene.
Then maybe this is normal for them. Maybe this is it.
—
There’s a new death cult in town. Or maybe not so much new as they’ve decided now was the opportune moment to emerge from the shadows. The Cult of Sephiroth — what a creative name — though there’s nothing supernatural about them at all. No, they’re entirely human, which makes them all the more terrifying.
Tifa encounters them firsthand when Denzel doesn’t come home from school. Marlene is safe in her room, promising to not let in a soul until Tifa returns. She calls Barret just in case, though he’s far, far away. Cloud too is on one of his deliveries somewhere on the other side of the world. She gets his voicemail, of course, and leaves a message just so she can say she tried.
She finds them surprisingly easy to track down. It’s almost like they want to be found. They number about a dozen, and Tifa makes quick work of them all though she’s far from her physical peak. The one benefit of a human enemy. Denzel is their only captive. His second kidnapping in about as many months. Some parent she is.
Before she knocks him unconscious, she asks the last one why. She’ll never forget his eerily peaceful smile.
“He promised us a better world.”
—
Denzel is unharmed, though frightened and exhausted. He’s almost too big for it now, but Tifa carries him home. Marlene plays nursemaid by his bedside while Tifa guards the door. The bar is obviously closed for the night.
She scrutinizes everyone that passes by with such intensity that she nearly drifts off to sleep. When she opens her eyes, she sees Denzel, out of bed, crossing the street. His name is on the tip of her tongue when she realizes — he’s not alone, he’s with them.
She’s never met them, never had the chance, but she’s memorized their faces by now, from the faded photograph that’s always at his side. They are older now, and she can see in their gaze the wisdom and devotion she could only ever hope to possess. And now that she’s really looking at him, she can see that he’s a bit taller, his figure fuller, and on his face — the rarest of sights — a smile.
An engine roars. The vision fades.
“Where is he?”
Cloud jumps off his bike, sword already in hand.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, Cloud. He’s safe.” She’s about to put a calming hand on his shoulder when she sees the look in his eyes.
She remembers the last time she had seen those eyes. He wasn’t himself.
—
They argue about it that night, as much as two people can argue in hushed whispers, careful not to wake the children sleeping upstairs.
“You can’t just expect me to wait around playing defense.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Tifa says softly, “but what else can we do right now? It’s not as if they’re some well-structured organization. They’re a bunch of broken people sharing the same delusion. So we hunt them all down. Then what? They’ll just keep coming. We can’t destroy something that doesn’t exist.”
“But they could lead us to him.”
And then she sees it, and wonders how she could have missed it before. The guilt that hunches his shoulders, that’s ridden all over his face. He thinks this is his failure, not her own.
“We still don’t know if there is a him.”
“But they certainly seem to think there is. And do you really think they would have come after Denzel if it wasn’t for him. If wasn’t for his obsession with me?”
She can’t lie to him, so she doesn’t.
“I let this happen. I was so stupid and careless. I was delivering a package in fucking Wutai when — “
“But nothing happened, Cloud. They’re just people, and we can handle ourselves. I know you’re worried, but you can’t protect us from everything all of the time.”
She turns to him, but she’s done nothing to soothe the wild look in his eyes.
“Though if you think it’s better for you to be somewhere else right now, then I understand. We’ll make it work. We’ll figure out how to tell the kids, I’m sure they’ll —”
He buries his head into her chest. Her words escape.
—
He starts taking odd jobs. Does anyone really need something delivered to the Great Glacier or the Mythril Cave? She peeks into his office one day and sees a map obsessively tracking every last monster, firestorm and cult sighting, trying to find some sort of pattern. He hasn’t yet.
She thinks she should ask him. She thinks she should wait for him to tell her first. And then, of course, she does nothing.
Still, he makes it home for dinner most nights. This, she supposes, is their unspoken compromise. The kids are thrilled to see him, even if he’s not entirely there. What can be done? At least he’s more present now than he was the last time.
But the kids are always more perceptive than she gives them credit for. One day, out of the blue, Marlene asks, “Is Sephiroth back?”
Tifa can’t lie to her, so she nods. “But you have nothing to worry about. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
Not this time. She keeps that last part to herself.
Marlene shakes her head. The answer does nothing to address her real question, her real fear. She looks to Cloud’s office nervously before turning back to Tifa. Her lips are already parted, but before she can ask, she swallows it back.
And forces a smile.
Some kind of role model she is. Tifa doesn’t know whether she should laugh or cry.
—
She hears him first before she finds Barret waiting at the counter.
“Say the word, and I’ll go bust his spiky head.”
“Did Marlene say something?”
He laughs. “Oh, my little girl’s smart, alright, but some things I can see with my own two eyes.”
She grows conscious of her stiff shoulders, her forgotten exhale. “Cloud’s fine,” and then she deflects, “So what’s the occasion? Taking Marlene somewhere fun?”
“Looks like my other girl is just as smart, but don’t think that means I’m letting you get away with not answering my question.”
“And what question is that?” She asks innocently, pouring him a big glass of Corel wine. Maybe she should leave the bottle this time.
“Suppose I’ve actually got to ask it first,” but not before he downs half the glass. “So tell me, what’s eating you?”
She pours one for herself before she tries to answer. “I was thinking maybe…maybe Marlene should stay with you longer this time.”
He practically slams his arm into the counter. “What? You don’t think she’s good enough for you anymore?”
Luckily for the counter, it wasn’t the one with a gun. She knows he says this out of anger. She knows he says this out of love. And it’s her own fault, for being so careless with her words. “Of course not. I just…don’t know if I’m good enough for her.”
He softens and bids her to his side. “Don’t tell me those cult members have got you spooked.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not the physical threat I’m worried about. But mentally and emotionally, I don’t know if this is the best place for her.”
A long, uneasy beat, and finally, “Tifa, look me in the eyes when I say this.”
She does only because he asks.
“You are the kindest and most selfless person I’ve ever known.”
She looks away. “This wasn’t what — I wasn’t trying to fish for compliments.”
“And just because you and Cloud might not be on the same page all the time doesn’t mean you’re a bad influence. It means that you’ve got a normal, healthy relationship.”
Normal, that word again. As if repeating it could make it true.
“Thanks, Barret. That means more than you could even know, but I’d still rather not have her learning from my worst habits.”
“And what would that be?”
“She’s usually so open, so forward, always saying exactly what’s on her mind, but the other day, she caught herself. She bottled it up.”
He chuckles. “Isn’t that a good thing? Learning to think before she speaks?”
She was hoping not to elaborate. Thankfully, he continues. “Though if she’s actually bottling things up, that’s less good.”
He looks at her, and she knows she can’t avoid it now.
“And what exactly was she bottling up?”
Tifa hesitates, but what was the point? He already knows. “It is Cloud, isn’t it?”
She slowly nods before she can stop herself. “But he has nothing but the best intentions, and I’m at least as much to blame.”
He sees what she’s doing, and he’s known her too long to fall for it now.
“Are things bad?”
“No,” a beat, “At least, not as bad as they were before.”
“But it could get that way, if you keep letting it fester.”
“…Yeah.”
He ponders, for just a moment. “I was planning on taking Denzel with Marlene too. They’re good for each other.”
She finally smiles. “He’d love that, I’m sure.”
“Leaving the two of you plenty of time to work things out, and I mean actually work things out. Talk.”
Her smile quickly fades.
“You’re good for each other too. You’ve just got to remind yourselves sometimes.”
And there he is. Throwing them another lifeline. Swooping in to save the day. How many more times can she expect him to derail his own life for their sake? She should let him go. She should let them all go. Give them a chance to escape from her miserable maw.
She says none of this, of course. Instead, she wraps her arms around him as his eyes widen. They never seem to reach the full circumference of his chest.
—
That night, it’s just the two of them. The air is thick, the room so wide. For all the mutants and monsters she’s faced, the task ahead of her is the most daunting yet.
Cloud, it seems, feels the same. He’s staring at the ground, running his hand through his hair, little boy lost.
“Tifa, I —”
“I’ll go with you.”
He’s taken aback. “Go…where?”
She is a bit too. She spoke without thinking, but it’s too late to walk it back now. “To find Sephiroth, or whoever it is that’s behind this.”
“Oh.”
He blinks back his surprise. He’s quiet for a beat, and she wonders if it was the wrong thing to say.
That thought is interrupted when he asks. “Do you think we’ll find the answer?”
She laughs, “Honestly, no,” and something finally falls away between them, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
—
They pack light and stop by every little town and village, some she hadn’t seen since Meteorfall. Every step stirs up old memories, but she pushes them away. There would be a time and place for that, but that isn’t now.
Cloud insists on chasing every lead dangled by the town gossip, but Tifa knows better. If there’s anything she’s learned from being a barmaid a quarter of her life, it’s that there’s no place for the truth like the local tavern after a glass of wine.
First is Kalm. Before they’ve even placed their orders, they’re swarmed by patrons who recognize them as the heroes who saved the world twice. She lends a patient ear, and Cloud too, he tries. It’s the least and only thing she can do. There are no monsters to fight, no wounds to heal. Just a deep unspeakable malaise. That something is wrong with this world. That this something they cannot change.
She quickly realizes, everyone is here to drown their sorrows in drink, not to find the power for their sorrows to be undone. Though she’d never admit it to him, Tifa wonders if they’re searching in the wrong place.
—
In Junon, the barkeep tells Tifa the story of an old woman who used to sit in the same seat and order the same dish every night. She was lonely, having suffered a great loss. Her husband to the war, her sons when Midgar was struck by Meteor. He did his best to keep her company, to keep his empathy from shriveling into pity. Then one day, she waltzed in with a smile. He’d never seen one on her before, but thought there was something unnatural to it. His fears were confirmed when she opened her mouth and told him that she had seen them again. That she was leaving now, and would only be back once they had all returned.
Tifa listens with a sense of guilty familiarity. She hopes Cloud was too engrossed to take note.
“Do you think she’d talk to us?”
The barkeep shakes his head, but gives them an address and wishes them luck.
They knock thrice, and wait a few minutes more. When they hear nothing, not even a footstep, he punches through the window.
“Cloud…” Tifa chastises before she follows him inside.
It’s a small apartment, though packed with the fullness and sadness of her life. All those memories, meticulously arranged, save for a haphazardly placed desk in the back of the room that looks almost hilariously out of place.
Letters and photos are carelessly strewn about. One particular image grabs their attention — the four of them in front of the church after the Holy rain.
—
This part comes easy, having a tangible enemy to chase. It’s like muscle memory. Things are so simple when they don’t have to think about anything else.
And this time, their opponent is no mastermind but a fifty year-old widow and bereaved mother of two. They follow her across the sea to a cave near the deserts of Corel. The gang here is even sadder than the one Tifa faced in Edge. Their faces all weary and broken down, at the end of their rope. Cloud sheathes his sword.
They’ve managed to get a few surveillance photos of the kids out and about — Denzel, and Marlene too. Tifa looks around the hovel and finds no weapons of note, only the loosest, softest binds. Any anger she may have held dissipates.
“Where is he? Who’s telling you to do all this? ” Cloud asks.
The woman shakes her head, not because she doesn’t want to tell them, but because she doesn’t know.
“We just want to see them again.”
Her voice is desperate, her eyes distant.
“Are we really asking for that much? Don’t you have enough?”
When the woman finishes, Tifa realizes she had been looking her way.
—
They hand them over to the WRO for further questioning, but as far as they’re concerned, it’s a lost cause.
Alone in their scant quarters, they turn to the other and declare, “You were right.”
They laugh. A comfortable silence falls between them, and Tifa knows now is the time. She settles at the edge of the bed, her hands gripping the sheets. “I’ve been seeing them too.”
Cloud looks at her quizzically as he joins her.
“The visions,” she continues.
Oh. He gently places his hand on her own. “What are you seeing?”
A beat, and she finally finds the words. “People who should still be alive but aren’t.”
He nods. Of course he does. He knows. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet. Not tonight.”
He nods again, and then he holds her. Her head against his shoulder, she listens to the slow, steady beat of his heart.
—
That night, he starts coughing up blood.
Her first instinct is that it’s back. She checks his arms and forehead for the telltale black pus, but he’s clean. He spends the rest of the night in the bathroom, trying to reassure her between coughing fits. It must be something that he ate.
She waits outside the door, but she already knows. How could it end any other way?
—
He spends most of his days in bed. He asked to keep the kids away, worried that like before, he might lose control of his mind. She worries too, staring as they sleep. The pallor in his cheeks, the blue in his veins. But some of his old scars, they’ve started to fade.
On a particularly bad day, she wonders if she should call them back. So that they’ll be there if —she regrets it immediately. As if he doesn’t have enough on his mind.
“Are you still having those visions?” he calmly asks.
She nods yes, a little surprised. They hadn’t discussed it since that night.
“Am I in any of them?”
“No,” she replies, wondering where this is going.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine.”
He smiles. It’s almost wide enough to hide the pain.
—
She calls Reeve looking for answers. They run all sorts of scans and tests, but whatever it is that’s ailing Cloud is something no science nor medicine can cure.
Before he lets her off the phone, Reeve asks about her. “We’ve been so wrapped up in his obsession with Cloud that I didn’t stop to think that if he really was back, he’d also come after you.”
She tells him even less than she told Cloud. It doesn’t feel like a lie. Part of her knows, whatever this is, is something she’ll have to face alone.
—
The kids are still with Barret. Corel is safer somehow. She and Cloud call them every evening, though their voices grow less assured with time.
Barret waits for a night when Cloud is too weak to get on the phone. He tells her in a whisper, Denzel’s been getting the headaches too.
—
Then the disappearances start.
There’s no apparent rhyme or reason to them. Some are those for whom the end would be a release. Some are entire communities that vanish without a trace. In their absence, things only get worse.
Nascent governments collapse. Not only do they lack the bodies, but the people have finally lost faith. Monsters ravage their towns one day and are gone the next. Who’s to say if the next time they see their loved ones will be the last. There’s no solid ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
As much as she can see the appeal, giving up isn’t something she knows how to do. Cloud is the same. Against her protests, he drags his broken body to Reeve’s office in what is left of the WRO.
“You’re still here too,” he greets them with what passes for humor these days.
Please, please, please. He’s gotta know something, but he can only guess.
“My working hypothesis is that some of these disappearances are by choice, and the others are a consequence of that first group of disappearances. Of course, what good is a hypothesis you can never test?”
It says something about them, she thinks, that neither of them questions why this is a fate anyone would choose. Instead, Cloud asks, “How do we stop it? How do we stop him?”
“We still don’t know if it is him. And if it is, then he’s traveling across time and space, and that’s something no machine on this planet can do.”
Why did they bother? But he continues.
“While we’re on the subject of unprovable theories, my thought for a while has been that all of this — the monsters, the disappearances, what’s happening to Cloud — is that two versions of our world are colliding into one another and this is the result. And if that’s the case, then we still have a chance. Nothing is written yet.”
These days, this is what passes for hope.
—
Outside, in the ruins of Midgar, they’re ambushed by a horde of those monsters. Cloud is too weak to lift his sword, so Tifa fends them off on her own.
It’s his greatest fear come to life, but when she looks into his eyes, she can only see pride.
In the distance is her church. Everyone has gone there looking for peace or absolution. Tifa thinks they should too. Maybe the healing water will work its magic again. Cloud is skeptical, but for her sake, he tries.
There’s a long line snaking around. He politely waits his turn while she waits outside. There’s nothing she can do for him now.
Then she hears laughter, what an unexpected sound. More so too that it’s her laughter, bright and clear as a bell. How long she’s kept it buried in the recesses of her mind, another door she was afraid to unlock.
Tifa turns, and the world is changed. The ruins are ruins no longer. The ground is bursting with life. The sky is bursting with light. How much she was able to do for them in death, how much more she can in life.
A chorus of children joins her laughter. Tifa sees his sword leaning against the wall outside, and she knows he must be at peace. She would love to see what it’s like, but there’s no place for her there, in that Elysian field she can never reach.
Instead, she finds herself facing him. This time, she finally asks, “Why are you showing me all this?”
His laughter drips with disdain. “You’re more of a fool than I thought.”
—
It doesn’t work, of course. Like everything she touches, it turns to dust.
One afternoon, she’s cleaning the kids’ empty room, above her emptier and emptier bar, when she finds the crumpled piece of homework behind Denzel’s desk. She thinks about the hope she had that day, how it feels like a lifetime away.
What was he saying again? That the Lifestream was the planet’s immune system. The fever will run until the virus is gone. Then maybe all of this is a good thing. Maybe this is the Planet fighting back.
She hears a voice again. This time, it sounds like her own. They’ll be better off without you.
—
Barret calls. His voice breaks before he can get out a word, but she already knows. She’s spent her whole life preparing for heartbreak so when it finally happens it would hurt less.
What’s one more thing to be wrong about?
Cloud locks himself in his room. She won’t reach him. She won’t even try. Yet she finds herself, fist clenched, raised above his door.
Denzel runs right past her. Of course, she knows it’s not him. Of course, she knows it can’t be real. But if this is real, if he’s really gone, then that’s not a reality she wants to live in. What was it that Reeve said again? Nothing is written yet. That’s what she wants to believe. That’s what she’ll have to believe.
She follows him down the stairs, through her empty bar. He walks out the door into the unknown beyond. It’s not the sky but the swirling dark that greets her. She knows she’s being a fool. She knows she’s walking into a trap, but it’s hope. Even if it’s not, she has to believe that it is.
—
She knows the place, but never thought she’d see it. She knows the day. The ground shakes. The gunfire roars below.
He stares at the house, at their absence before the fact. “I thought I could find them here.”
She feels as helpless as she felt that day.
He gives her a small smile. “It’s not your fault, Tifa. You didn’t —”
She’s still on the plate when it falls.
Into her church, Tifa lands on her immaculate, improbable flowerbed. She knows the geography is all wrong. Still, she searches for the truth behind that benevolent smile.
“I never blamed you either.”
All of this falls away too.
Down into the basement below the bar. They speak to her in one voice.
“You were the one who warned us. But what would it have mattered? They had our numbers from the start.”
Laughter. They disappear, and he takes their place.
Sephiroth. Perhaps she would have given him less power if she had given him a name.
“You make it too easy.”
She says nothing, trying to find an escape through that ocean of green.
“Do you actually think they would thank you? After all that you’ve done? You really are pathetic.”
“What did you do to him?”
The ocean shifts behind him. All their cries and screams. She can’t turn it off.
“Why? So you can save him? You’d only make things worse. You only ever make things worse.”
It’s a truth she would only believe less coming from his lips.
He smirks, “Don’t you believe me? Or do you choose not to remember?”
She never gets a chance to answer. A bright, bright light.
—
And then she’s back in the dark, but it’s not dark for long. Light swirls. Her memories do too, but only the very worst, projected all around her like the world’s most sadistic movie screen.
She’s not alone. He’s taken his cruelest form yet. He looks around, perplexed. He’s in so many of them. So much of her is him. If only he could see some of the good ones too.
His urgent call, “Tifa!” and then he offers his hand, “Let’s go.”
He’s exactly who she wants to see, saying exactly what she wants him to say, so she turns away.
“What are you doing? You can’t possibly want to stay here, in this —”
He struggles to describe it. She decides she’ll keep calling him a him. It’s easier that way. “No, of course not. I’m trying to find him. But you — you’re just a figment of my imagination.”
That look on his face. She wishes she could remember when she had seen it last. The laughter echoes as she’s falling, falling, away.
—
She can still smell the lemon spray used to clean the counter, hear the slightly creaky floorboard beneath her feet, see the shadows of the chairs stacked against the wall. It’s like her body knew what her mind couldn’t admit. He smiled, and then he was gone.
She sees herself what must have been a week later, when she would no longer try. Their ending had been decided without her. A sense of finality she apparently did not deserve. She smothered her hope, but when his phone rang, she couldn’t help but pick up the line.
Now she’s somewhere else. The soiled bandages and the bedroll. That this was the place he had chosen to die. She watches herself lose the fight.
In the children’s bedroom. He was staring out the window when she finally stirred. Day had already turned into night. He wouldn’t look at her, but he was there.
“He’s an idiot.”
She turns in surprise. She had forgotten he was there. She had forgotten why they were there. He’s nothing like the man with the black sleeve over his arm, eyes cast on the ground.
“I think I can say that, since I’m just a figment of your imagination and all.”
She tries to ignore this as the Cloud of her memory crossed over to the other bed. She was really laying into him now. She winces at the sound of her own voice. She winces at the reason why.
“I thought we’d — I thought you’d talked about this. There was nothing you could have done better. There was nothing you had done wrong. This was something he had to figure out for himself.”
She’d thought so too, but somehow hearing those words from that cruel but convincing mouthpiece made her less assured. She watches as the Cloud from before turned his head, unmoved. Behind them, Reno and Rude were trying to squirm away.
“Now could he have figured out a way to work through his issues without causing his loved ones more pain? Absolutely, but again, none of that is your fault.”
“But,” she starts just to hold her ground, and it’s too late to stop now. “If he felt like he could have talked to me about it. If he hadn’t felt like he had to hide, then maybe all our pain, all his pain could have been avoided. If I had been better.”
She hesitates, but what is there to be afraid of? If he isn’t really him.
“If I had been someone else.”
Was this the truth in her heart all along?
“Tifa...”
His eyes are on her, but she won’t look his way, at all the disastrous things she would find in his gaze.
Now he was walking out the door, to save the kids, to confront his past. All’s well that ends well as they say. That’s what they’d have her believe. That’s what she had to believe.
And look where it’s led.
—
The night Marle introduced them, she hadn’t thought much of it. Sure there was his size and the gun on his arm, but she ran a bar. People like him came and went all the time.
He was no stranger, but they danced around their pasts the few times they spoke, which was quite unusual for two people at a bar. Unless, of course, they were two who had both suffered a great loss.
The night they realized the source of their loss was one and the same, he told her everything over last call. It wasn’t long before she joined their cause.
To save the planet, to save the planet, she repeated like a mantra. One day, she might believe it too.
When they decided to bomb the reactor, she knew she was going to lose the fight. So she served up her childhood friend and ‘Ex-SOLDIER’ to them on a platter. Was it for their sake or hers? Either way, she had ensured their success and all that it had wrought.
“It wasn’t your fault, Tifa. You didn’t pull the trigger. Shinra did.”
He’s still there. He’s found her somehow, telling her what she’d been telling herself all these years.
Their bodies on the pillar. The plate as it collapsed. She can still smell it. She can still hear the screams.
If she’s going to go with this metaphor, then they, at the very least, loaded the gun.
“AVALANCHE was just a scapegoat. Neo-Midgar, remember? They were planning it all along. If it wasn’t for us, they would have found some other excuse.”
That’s right, but coming from him, it must be wrong. It’s all wrong.
“But we don’t know that.”
“But we know Shinra, and there’s nothing that they wouldn’t have done to —”
It’s his insistence that draws her into despair. Was it true? Was it them? Was it her? Would they have been saved if she had been better, if she hadn’t been there?
—
They watched from the lake’s shore as he lowered her body into its depths. The water was so still, its silence only interrupted by their sobs.
He stiffens beside her. “What’s this have to do with — “
“Five years.”
She had been so flattered by the flower that she tried to dismiss his comment as a slip of the tongue.
A week later, they were standing in an inn at Kalm. She had been holding onto the dresser behind her so tightly, the wood began to splinter beneath her nails. He was telling the story of their past, but telling it all wrong. He turned to her for comfort and guidance when he had finished. The coward that she was, she didn’t say anything at all.
He says nothing. What was there left to say? They’re already on the same page. She knows, she knows, she knows.
Junon, in its rotting underbelly, he tried asking again. Again, she ran away.
“She was always talking about the future. Dreaming of the days that would come. I robbed her of that life.”
The Temple of the Ancients, which now fit in the palm of his hand. They had foiled his plot. They had saved the world. Then Cloud lifted his sword. Their screams managed to reach him, just barely in time.
Tifa can’t bear to look. He can’t either.
“And I robbed you — him of his life with her.”
She was at the altar, her hands folded in prayer. They ran, they ran. They all ran, but they couldn’t reach her this time.
—
The Water Tower. Of course, that’s where it all began.
Had there ever been a night so blue? Back then, the color of her dress still matched the color of his eyes. All the innocence he lost, all the life that was stolen away. All because of her.
“This too?”
If Tifa didn’t know better, she would almost say he sounded hurt, but she does, and who was he trying to convince?
“Why do you keep pretending? Why do you keep torturing me when you’ve already won?”
He had told her he was going to leave. She had hoped he would be the one to stay.
“Pretending…? Wait you don’t actually think I’m him?”
But she didn’t say any of that. Instead she goaded him into a promise that haunts him to this day.
“So that’s what this is. That’s what he’s trying to show you. What if you weren’t there? What if you didn’t exist?”
They watch as the children stared at the night sky.
She wishes she could plug her ears.
“But I don’t believe it, Tifa. You’re braver than that. And this game that he’s playing, it’s getting boring.”
She turns in surprise. He’s already climbing the tower. She’s already close behind.
“Let’s change it up a bit. What if you had turned around?”
His teenage self. She’d never seen him from that angle. The heartsick, lovestruck look on his face.
“What if I had turned around?”
This she already knows. It would have given her away. She was completely crestfallen when he spoke.
“What if we had actually said what we’d felt? What if I had stayed?”
She laughs. She’s not sure at what. Maybe the part about saying her feelings out loud. “We could have been normal.”
“Normal is nice,” he says wistfully.
“But then when Sephiroth came…”
“Oh, right. That guy.”
She half expects him to swoop down from the sky now, for the illusion to shatter, but no. He’d rather prolong the pain.
“Though I’m sure you would have grown tired of me long before then.”
She knows he’ll try to reach her, so she turns the other way.
“You would have been miserable. You were always meant for bigger things. You were always meant to be a hero.”
This time, he’s the one who laughs. “Not any hero, Tifa. Just yours.”
His hand almost finds hers. It’s another twist of the knife, how much she wants it to.
“I wish I could believe you.”
He lets it fall away.
“I wish you could believe me too.”
—
They’re still standing like this when they find themselves back where they started. All the memories that surround her aren’t so terrifying with him by her side.
How pathetic. No wonder she was such an easy mark.
“Forget about me. Forget about us. What were you doing here? What were you trying to find?”
The question jolts her awake. “Denzel. I was looking for —”
“Of course, you were,” and he’s shaking his head. “That’s the only way he could get you. Because you were thinking of someone else. Because you’re always, always thinking of someone else.”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighs and takes a seat on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees like a delinquent schoolboy.
“You’re not going to believe me, are you?”
He looks ridiculous sitting there. She feels ridiculous standing alone. It’s all ridiculous anyways. It’s all in her head.
“I wish there was something I could tell you that would make you believe I’m not just his illusion or a figment of your imagination, but well,” he laughs. She will always know that laugh, “I guess that wouldn’t really work because there’s nothing I could say that you wouldn’t already know.”
Always knowing exactly what to say. He’s got that part down alright.
“Remember what Reeve said about all this being two versions of the world colliding? Well, all that’s happened. The monsters, the disappearances, my body deteriorating, Denzel, all of that was just a preview of a world without you.”
She scoffs. “I thought you wanted me to believe you.”
But he’s undeterred. “Think about it. In Mideel, the Lifestream. You’re the only one who could have put me back together. Without you, I would have been a vegetable, and there would have been no stopping him or Meteor, and our world — well, it would look a little bit like ours when you left it.”
“I —”
“In the Crater, if you’d never caught me. In Midgar, if you’d never found me. During Geostigma, if you had just given up on me. Need I go on?”
She’s speechless. She’s a fool.
“Tifa?”
“I’m…I’m sorry. That all this happened because of me. Because I was too weak.”
He moves towards her as if he’s about to cradle her face, but at the last second, he pulls away.
“Tifa…you’re not weak. You’re the strongest person I know, but he has a way of twisting even the best of us against ourselves. I just wish you would have talked to me about it,” a beat, “Though I guess I’m not one to talk.”
He laughs, and she can’t help but laugh too.
“Then maybe you could have seen what I see. Denzel — I wish we could have saved them, I wish they could have been spared, but he’s lucky to have you. And he loves you. Even if he can’t put it in words.”
She listens, she listens. Waiting for the rug to be pulled from under her feet.
“There’s nothing we could have done to save her. And Tifa, you know her, probably better than any of us. She wouldn’t have wanted you to blame yourself. Even I’ve learned to stop blaming myself, and you can’t possibly hold yourself responsible for every terrible decision I’ve made.
All his words sound right and true — She was good. She was forgiving — but there was always a part of Tifa that would feel like a cheap substitute for someone she couldn’t even try to replace.
“…And me. I thought you would know, but how could you? I never put it in words. I could never find the words, but now I’m going to try.”
He turns to her.
“I love you.”
It’s not just the frankness that surprises her.
“You’re the one constant I’ve had. You’re the reason I still exist. Every good thing that’s happened to me, every good deed that I’ve done is because you’ve been there to support me. Even then, with all that I don’t deserve, you’re the best thing in my life. Even if the world wouldn’t end without you, I wouldn’t want to live in a world without you in it. You’re it for me, Tifa. Even when it’s hard to get up in the mornings, even when we’re barely speaking, just to see you by my side, it’s more than I could ever ask for, it’s more than —”
They hear him laughing. Cackling, really. Then he appears before them. That horrible apparition. Sephiroth.
“This is even better than I thought. You can’t possibly believe this nonsense your mind has made up.”
He runs towards him. “Won’t you take a hint and just fucking die already?”
Where he’s left, his absence feels so stark. Without thinking, Tifa reaches for him. “Cloud!”
He turns in surprise. For a moment, he’s solid, and then her hand passes right through.
Sephiroth laughs and laughs.
Cloud winces. “Reeve mentioned this might happen.”
There’s no stopping it now. He fades and fades.
“I wish you would believe me. I hope you can believe me, but you don’t need me for this. You’re stronger than him. You can beat him. You’ve done it before.”
With what’s left of him, he holds her by the shoulders.
“There are parts of you he can’t reach. There are things he could never touch. I know you’ll find them, and then I’ll see you. I’ll see you.”
And then, he’s gone. Her body is quivering. Sephiroth is still laughing. “What a touching reunion. Do you actually believe him? Do you actually think you’re that good?”
The answer comes easily. “No, but I know they aren’t that cruel.”
He scowls, and with a sweep of his hand, he sends a torrent of memories flying towards her. The sirens are calling her to shipwreck, but there is a place that she knows.
—
She can hear the piano playing, the tentative notes of the first stanza. She never learned the rest of the song.
She lost the tempo, but her mother was sitting right next to her on the bench. Her mother who could play the entire thing from memory without missing a beat. She might have messed it up just to hear her.
She thought she would never be so beautiful. She thought she would never reach her age.
Those languid summer days, how quickly the time would slip away. The breeze through the open window. The black and white keys. She laid her head on her shoulder. She stretched her fingers until she could find the chords.
She imagines him watching from the corner, smiling that serene smile. She wonders if he had been watching then too. From outside the window, from the house next door. This little girl right here, she really had no clue.
Sephiroth wasn’t a shadow of a thought back then. Sephiroth was nowhere to be found.
—
He was wearing that same smile more than ten years later. They were but days outside of Midgar, the weight of the world on their frail shoulders, when, searching for more suitable means of transportation, they came across a Chocobo ranch.
Barret was taunting Red and the other animals in the distance. She and Aerith were feeding the birds. They had just made a joke about Cloud’s hair, which he pretended not to hear. He wasn’t quite himself yet, but in moments like these, he was him.
Despite what was to come, she probably laughed more in those few weeks than she had ever before. Though his presence lingered over them. Though he was the reason their time was cut short, this was hers. This he could never take away.
—
They had made it to the end. They were somehow still alive. She didn’t know how to do it. She’d never trained for this kind of life. Then he turned towards her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, and smiled that peaceful smile.
“Because I have you.”
—
His surprise when Marlene clung to his side.
His joy when he brought home that stupid bike.
His tranquility when he lifted Denzel into the water.
She can see a light now, and Sephiroth is nowhere to be found.
The door opened, and he came home.
Yes, it’s there.
The night was long, but he came home.
Yes, there’s hope.
He came home.
Hope that her prayers can be answered. Hope that her sins can be undone. Hope that she can see this once more —
He comes home.
—
She can see the sky when her eyes finally adjust to the light. She can hear their voices in the distance, and they’re running towards her, Barret and Marlene, and Denzel. Denzel, he’s alive.
She is standing in a ocean that is the greenest of blues, the same blue as his eyes. His. Him. She searches, hears his sputtering, and he’s found.
The water is no match for his spikes. His skin is unblemished otherwise. He barely catches his breath before she collides into his chest. He’s solid, so solid.
Cloud opens his mouth to ask, but she answers first, “I believe you. I believe you,” and now he’s clinging onto her for dear life.
She’s not sure how much time has passed when he says, “Next time we talk about our feelings, maybe we shouldn’t wait until we’re in each other’s minds.”
She laughs as they finally break apart.
They’d been holding onto each other for so long, it’s embarrassing, but she doesn’t mind. A new chorus of voices joins the others, and they’re all hooting and hollering, and they’re all running into the water, and they’re all linking hands.
All their friends and family, altogether, and that moment again, she gets another chance.
She can see a world that is no longer ending, their lives stretched out ahead of her, all the joy and pain that is yet to come. And for a moment, Tifa worries that she’ll waver. She worries that she’ll be overcome. She worries that she’ll fail them all over again —
She feels a warm hand on her own.