Chapter Text
Cloud felt his world tilt at his feet, bile rose in his gut bringing on a wave of nausea and the blood pumping in his ears was beyond deafening. He could scarcely hear what she was saying. “- it’s just not fair to either of us to continue like this.”
The room immediately snapped into painful focus. He was standing in their living room in front of the dying fire in their hearth. Tifa was standing by the doorway, backlit from the dim yellow lights in the hallway; he was bathed in her shadow. Cloud swallowed thickly to clear the tightness in his throat to manage “You’re breaking up with me?”
His heart clenched further as frustration flitted onto her face and she forcefully wiped away the tears on her cheeks. “Breaking up implies that we were together, Cloud. What even were we?”
He opened his mouth to interject but she continued to tighten her grip on his heart.
Were.
“We never talked about it.” she said, the brief show of agitation on her face melted back into a familiar sadness. “We just fell into it and assumed that this was what we were supposed to do.” She let out a shaky breath and Cloud raised a hand to massage his brow -- a futile gesture to dull the thudding. “I thought we could figure it out but we couldn’t. We don’t know how to talk to each other and we don’t know how to try. It’s not right.” Tifa stopped, her eyes momentarily breaking away from him as a brief second of indecision crossed over her face. Pursing her lips, she cleared her throat to continue, “and I can’t be a second choice and you can’t be with someone who resents you for it.”
Cloud’s head snapped up to meet her watery gaze. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he spat out.
She flinched at the harshness and broke off her gaze. Holding her arm as if to shrink away from him she mumbled, “I think you know what I mean, Cloud. I’m what’s left.”
His mind reeled. What’s left? She is all that there ever was. How could she think that? Had he ever done anything to make her feel that —. His gaze dropped to her hand tightly gripping her opposite arm; her thumb worried the ribbon tied there. Aerith , his eyes widened with realisation.
“You think I’m only with you, because I can’t be with Aerith?” he asked, his tone rising as he balked at the incredulous accusation. “Tifa, I’m only alive because of you. I’m only who I am -- who I’ve ever been -- because of you.” Desperation crept over him, painful tendrils digging into his muscles begging him to move -- to do something. He stepped closer to her, reaching out tentatively while he stumbled over his words. “Aerith and I — it’s complicated, I don’t — I don’t really know how to talk —“ If he could just hold her then she’d understand.
Please. Don’t do this.
Tifa flinched away from him and Cloud let out a strangled choke at the sight. Shaking her head she stepped back again towards the door, “you were in love with her. You went to her. You left me and went to her. I lost out to a memory.”
His head was pounding as she went on. “No, that’s not — Tif, that’s not what I was doing!”
She cut him off again. At the knees. At the throat. “What if I did the same thing?”
He can’t remember how to breathe anymore.
Tifa levelled a cool stare at him while her tears dripped onto the floorboards. Throughout it all, she never raised her voice but the question was thrown with such quickness, blurted out into the dark chasm between them — her heartache laid out bare in front of him. Cloud numbly registered the hard edge in her tone, just another cut into his heart at that point. “What if I was dying and I left you without a word and lived in another man’s home?” She tilted her head. “An old lover’s home? What would you think then?”
She doesn’t understand , the thought circled in his head, I don’t know how to make her understand. “Tifa please,” he pleaded, “it really wasn’t about that.” He shook his head and tried to start again. “I couldn’t — I couldn’t be here —“ he shut his mouth audibly with a snap as her lips pulled back in pain. That was very much the wrong thing to say.
Tifa schooled her face back into a mask of indifference as she watched him flounder about. Cloud felt a rising anger at the display, “I’m here now! I came back!”
“And so what?” She asked, her words defiant but her eyes grew distant and downcast as the adrenaline of the argument wore off. Cloud hated this, even at the end she wouldn’t fight with him. She just patiently waited for him to reach the conclusion that she had lingered at for weeks. “What’s changed Cloud?” she paused, looking around the room, at nothing in particular, just to avoid his panicked stare. “We’re still the same people from before, I try to hold onto you and you slip through my fingers.”
Cloud had no idea what to say anymore. The chill of the room was beginning to seep into his limbs and wind around his torso. He could hear himself gasp out a last ditch defence of his relationship, “I can — I can change —“
She silenced him with a soft whisper “Cloud.”
He stilled. Tifa looked up at him and her tired tear stained face pulled at his navel. He was losing her. He had lost her. “Please don’t make this any harder than it is.”
The sinking realisation hit him all too late, there wasn’t anything he could do. He could rage against angels and demons all day but in their dark home he choked and drowned in her words.
“I’ve tried. I really have tried to move past this but I can’t.” Her other arm came to wrap around herself as she screwed her eyes closed to shut him out. Cloud’s eyes followed her hands through her movements. Somewhere within he was able to register the myriad of cuts and bruises on her hands moving upwards to her arms. From the kitchen? Before being able to entertain the thought any further, Tifa was speaking again.
“The only thing that was holding us together was the kids but even with that,” she steadied another uneven breath, “we don’t need to be together to raise them.” The kids. He hadn’t even begun to think about how this was going to impact them. What do you mean , a thought floated into his head, she raised them without you for nine months. She can do it again. Cloud shook his head to rid himself of the treacherous thought; his re-entry into their lives was met with continual surprise and tentative happiness, even his relationally inept self was able to recognize the damage a second unexpected exeunt would cause them.
Tifa steeled herself for the finality of the discussion and Cloud could only watch dumbly as she steadied her knife over his heart.
“You were my first love.”
Plunge.
“I’ll always love you.”
Twist.
“But I can’t be with you anymore.”
Pull.
Tifa’s last words were strangled by a sob as she fled the room, crossing into her bedroom in a few hurried strides and shutting the door behind herself. He could hear her slide down the door and begin to weep with soft hiccups.
Cloud sank to his knees next to the cold, dark hearth.
He bled out for hours.