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FF7 - restore -- end of chapter 3
That's the Cloud/Tifa/Aeris/Zack/Sephiroth thing. So they're back at the bar, and now they're putting Seph to bed so the adults can talk. yeah, or something.
Still mostly Tifa POV, and I wrote a lot of it while half-asleep -- I swear I can only write this and Crossed Wires when i'm sleep-deprived and not quite understanding what I type -- so unless a miracle happened there are probably small (or huge?) problems with characterization, and there certainly are moments that need to be described more because I went all whee dialogue, and weird syntax and whatever else. if you spot anything that stands out badly, please tell me and i'll fix it. Thank you. ;_;
"... Well! Let's see it," Aeris commented with false cheer as she tugged Tifa toward the staircase, urging everyone to stay moving. "Say, Cloud, do you have a Seal Materia? I'll cast."
"Yeah, several. Tifa? You know where they are; would you mind?"
Tifa hesitated -- she didn't want to leave Cloud and Aeris alone with Sephiroth, and she still didn't know if she could really rely on Zack all that much. But someone needed to get the Materia, and the other ones didn't know where Cloud kept them.
Tifa walked fast into Cloud's bedroom, going straight for the drawer. Her hand closed on several Seal orbs; she released them all until she found the strongest, and then she held it against her chest and went to join them upstairs. She paused and got fresh sheets for the mattress on her way, though. She berated herself all along, but she got fresh sheets, and even a blanket. She would have cheerfully -- well, not cheerfully, but determinedly -- broken the man's neck, but making him sleep in the dust just seemed too petty.
Zack was standing outside the attic door, with his back to the wall, as if standing guard; he smiled at her, friendly as always but with a distracted, worried tint that took away from the reassuring gentleness in it. When Tifa leaned past him to look in, she almost felt like she was peeping, intruding on something private.
There were stacked chairs and stools in there that she ought to repair for the bar, a crate of books and one of mismatched shot glasses, a voluminous wooden wardrobe, Marlene's old toys, and a chest of drawers Tifa kept with the vague thought that Denzel would need it when he moved out. She briefly wondered about how fast the clutter had piled up, about how amazing it was that she could afford to keep said clutter now, instead of paring down to the necessities of the road, or fearing that one day everything she owned would burn, be gone without a trace.
The man who had burned her hometown, and sent her to the slums, and then on the road chasing him, stood there amongst her amassed belongings, looking down at the bare mattress. Cloud watched him without a word; but there was a tension between them Tifa could feel from the other end of the room, even though she could only see Sephiroth's back and had no clue what his expression was like.
"Ah, Tifa -- thank you, I didn't think of that."
Aeris stood in front of the skylight in the sloped roof, breathing in the cool night air. She moved to meet Tifa at the door, and held out her arms for the sheets and blanket; Tifa let her have them, and the Materia with it. She didn't want to come any closer if she didn't have to.
Sephiroth watched the green-eyed girl with a lack of expression that made Tifa shudder. She told herself that if he struck again, Cloud was close enough, ready to stop him.
"Look, you even have a blanket, isn't that nice?" Aeris chuckled, kneeling on the floor to make the bed. "Now move over, I need a little space."
Tifa's fingers whitened on the doorjamb. She didn't understand how it was that Aeris wasn't afraid, that she could make her way to the man who had murdered her so easily, shoo him with such a cheerful tone.
"Hey..." Zack whispered, and his hand touched her shoulder lightly; Tifa jerked and glanced at him, though she couldn't take her eyes away from the scene too long. "It's going to be fine. He'll lie down, she'll get him asleep --"
"He doesn't want to." Even she could see it, and she didn't even know the man.
"He'll do it anyway. He doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway -- see?"
For a tense handful of seconds, Sephiroth stood like a statue, tension gathering in his limbs -- Tifa could read it, that coiled-spring feeling which so often ended in violence. But just as she was about to step inside, the man closed his eyes, sighed, and sank down gracefully. Then he was out of sight, hidden by the chest of drawers. Cloud still stood, watching without a word as Aeris knelt and cast her spell, but the matching tension in his body had seeped out, leaving him looking weary, jaded.
"You okay?"
Tifa pulled her eyes away from the lights dancing on the wall and looked at Zack.
"... I'm fine. Just -- this is..." She shook her head, bit her lip. "... I don't get what's going on. Don't get -- you came back. That's -- that's good, but he came back -- and why?"
Zack sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah, the condensed version's not gonna cut it. "
Aeris muttered something vaguely miffed from her corner, pulling Tifa's attention back. Sephiroth's comeback rang like a vocal eyeroll. "Perhaps you would have more luck if you clubbed me instead. There's a bat in this corner..."
"Oh, you're trying to tempt me, aren't you."
There was no verbal reply, but Cloud snorted.
"You keep that eyebrow down, mister, or I'll do much worse than club you. I'll tuck you in." Aeris cast again before Sephiroth could answer, which was good because Tifa didn't know how long she could take listening to the light, friendly banter between them.
This time there was no answer; Aeris cast a third time, to be sure it took, and then accepted Cloud's offered hand and let him pulled her back up. Cloud cast a barrier around the bed; not a solid one, and they weren't all that resilient from the inside, but Tifa knew he would notice it breaking. She watched them navigate the attic, feeling like she'd end up sitting rather hard if she let go of the doorjamb.
"Tifa?" Cloud asked, frowning. "Are you okay?"
"Ah -- yes, yes. It's just a little..." she said, doing her best to smile at him. It had to be worse for Cloud; he'd suffered so much more at Sephiroth's hands. "You know -- in a way it would be easier if we just had to fight."
Cloud looked at her and nodded, like he knew what she meant. "Mmh. Uncertainty gets old."
Zack sighed, and Cloud gave him a narrow-eyed look, but the black-haired man didn't explain it. "I guess it's time for the long explanation now. Let's go back downstairs and we can talk as much as you need."
Tifa bit her lip. "I'd rather we used one of the bedrooms. The bar is too far down to hear anything..."
"In case he wakes up? Resilient or not, he won't wake up for a while," Aeris assured her gently. "A normal person wouldn't come out of it on their own for at least a week, and I don't think anything could wake him up that wouldn't get our attention too."
Cloud shrugged. "Bedroom's more comfortable."
Zack sighed again, probably because Cloud's reply sounded a lot like an excuse, but in the end he shook his head ruefully and chuckled. "Bedroom it is."
When they walked down the stairs, Cloud touched Tifa's hand and gave it a quick squeeze, and she felt a little better.
There was more space in Tifa's bedroom -- not a lot more, but still more than what Cloud's weapons racks left -- so that was where she led them. Cloud propped his sword against the wall and sat at the head of her bed, leaning a shoulder against the headboard and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. Unable to settle down, Tifa kept standing, watching as Aeris curled up in her armchair and Zack straddled a stool.
"Where to start..." Zack mused.
"How about you tell us why he's with you first." Cloud's body language was relaxed enough, but his tired eyes weren't.
Zack pressed a hand to his heart and winced playfully. "Ouch. That hurts, man. That's your first question?"
Cloud's expression only grew more weary. "It's not that I'm not glad to see you, Zack. You have no idea how bad it was after you died. But you've been dead eight years. Between seeing you again and having him back into the genocide business, it's not even a choice."
Zack's smile melted into a more subdued expression Tifa couldn't read.
"You're lucky he's not gonna be killing people then."
Cloud sucked in an irritated, hissing breath. "But how can you tell? He could be playing a game for all we know. If he needed Aeris to bring him back to life..."
"He did agree to be put under, right?" Aeris countered, voice soft and cautious. "He stayed and he allowed us to make him sleep. Do you really think he would let anyone make him so vulnerable if he wasn't sincere?"
Tifa bit her lip. That was a good argument. She really didn't want to admit it, but it was. It seemed too tortuous and ... low for the proud, arrogant man she remembered. Sephiroth -- the Sephiroth she had known, and granted she hadn't known him much, only that trip in the mountains and then his madness and the details Cloud let slip sometimes, but she thought, even when he was sane, that he would be more likely to tell them what he wanted, and if they said no, he'd skewer them and go get whatever he wanted to get in the first place. He wouldn't bother trying such a complicated, risky scheme when kidnapping and torturing them might work faster and more efficiently, and without having him lose control.
"Maybe he was counting on us thinking that," Cloud replied, looking away from Zack.
Zack snorted. "Seph? Counting on people to have common human decency? That'd be the day."
"He's been in my head enough to guess what I would do by now." Cloud shrugged it off.
Zack gave him a disappointed look. "You don't even believe that, Cloud. You're just looking for excuses to disagree."
Cloud glared at the man, eyes flashing with irritation. "What do you know about what I believe?"
Zack's teeth ground together. "I believe I can't fucking stand it when you fucking lie to my face! What the hell is your problem? Since when am I the enemy?"
Tifa knew what she would have answered -- 'you were the enemy since you sided with the enemy.' It wasn't what Cloud answered.
"What the hell makes him worth it?!"
It wasn't a rejection, line in the sand, you're with us or against us. It was 'did you abandon me? It hurts.' It took the wind out of Zack's sails; he slumped back on his stool, eyes full of sorrow.
"Cloud..."
Cloud had risen too; he crossed his arms and sat back down, looked away. There wasn't a lot to look at, apart from the wall and the corner of Tifa's big armchair, where Aeris coiled. Tifa bit her lip and looked at her, but the green-eyed girl seemed content to watch the scene unfold.
"Oh hell. I think after we came back from the dead it's not unmanly at all to have a goddamn group hug." And with that, Zack slipped off his stool, marched to the bed, and threw himself at Cloud's side with such determination the wooden frame groaned.
Tifa winced a little as Cloud startled under the rough, one-armed hug he was subjected to; watching them, she missed Aeris getting up until the girl caught her hand and tugged. "Come on! Let's join them."
"Aeris--" Tifa tried to protest, to no avail.
"Come on," Zack repeated, "Your presence is the only thing that stands between a group hug and two dudes mantouching on a bed."
Cloud rolled his eyes. "Right. Your arm around my clothed shoulders, it's practically gay porn."
Aeris gave a dreamy sigh. "If only."
"Hey!"
She sat at Zack's side and poked him in the ribs, making him squeak. "Move over, hotshot." Cloud tried to move to the head of the bed, but she reached for his sleeve and held him back. "No, not you. I want my hug too."
Cloud glowered a little, but was just embarrassed enough that by the time he opened his mouth to protest, Zack was already worming his way between his other side and the headboard. Aeris sat down, leaned her head on his shoulder.
Tifa felt the curious urge to excuse herself as she saw the three of them -- Zack and his strong hands and rueful eyes; Aeris with her soft little smile, both leaning on Cloud who sat stiff and straight, eyes closed. His best, most steadfast friend and his -- Tifa didn't have words for what Aeris had been to him. A friend, a flirt -- someone else who'd gone and died on him. Tifa wasn't sure she should be there if Cloud started to cry. Wasn't sure she shouldn't be elsewhere, before the knot in her throat choked her and she cried, too, for things too complicated to name.
But Aeris still held her hand, tugging, gently, stubbornly, until Tifa was on the bed, too, sitting with her shoulder to Aeris. Aeris slid her hand over, shifted her grip, palm to palm, soothing and warm and there.
"... No fair, we can't hug miss Lockhart. You're monopolizing her, babe."
Tifa blushed a little, and Aeris stuck out her tongue at Zack over Cloud's bowed head. "There are only so many places in the middle, you know."
"Should have piled up."
Cloud sighed, and Zack and Aeris instantly sobered up. "You two sound like this is all such a big joke at times..."
Zack growled and wrapped an arm around Cloud's back, stubborn. "Oh, shut up, it wasn't a walk in the park to come back, you know."
"Really? It doesn't sound like it, with how much you seem to care."
"Well sorry if I'd rather be happy to be back than mope and complain about the trip! It wasn't easy, okay? It wasn't easy at all."
"... Yeah?"
Cloud snuck a peek at Zack from under his bangs, head still hanging, shoulders slumped. Tifa felt compassion well up again. Cloud was so much more confident now, it was strange to see him revert to mannerisms from his darkest hours.
"I think," she said hesitantly, "You should just start the story. Don't worry about how long it will take -- just go from the start. There will be time for questions and details afterwards."
Zack nodded, giving her a quick smile. Tifa tightened her grip on Aeris' hand, crossed her ankles and waited, watching them all from the corner of her eye.
"Once upon a time..."
Cloud snorted quietly, a little smile tilting up the corner of his lips.
"Once upon a time, there was a dead guy floating in the Lifestream. Now the Lifestream is kind of a weird place..."
"I was there," Cloud reminded him.
"Miss Tifa wasn't. Shush."
"Actually, I went there too." Zack huffed; Tifa hid a smile behind her hand. "...But not for very long."
"Stop interrupting the story! Anyway, where was I -- okay so I was floating around. And in the Lifestream, you are the sum of your thoughts and memories and personality, and nothing else. And there's no real barrier between your thoughts and feelings and your neighbor's thoughts and feelings. So, inevitably, everyone misplaces bits and pieces as they go."
"I remember that. Get on with it already," Cloud interrupted, though he didn't actually sound all that annoyed. More like he didn't want to think about Zack eroding away too much.
"I really should gag you, blondie. Anyway... By the time Aeris arrived, I was already pretty far gone." Cloud's face went blank; Zack continued, blithely ignoring the downward plunge of his mood. "Being around her, it was easier to remember myself. She remembered me too. Started following her around, keeping track of what you guys were doing, tried to help with the Lifestream... Wasn't in a state to do much with Holy, but by the time Geostigma came around -- but that's later."
He rubbed Aeris' back absently, staring sightlessly at the floor in front of him.
"We were together when Sephiroth came in after Meteor, and... At the same time I was so goddamn proud of you, and how far you'd come, and -- fuck, I wanted to kill him again."
Cloud stiffened and gave him a bewildered look, that Tifa echoed. "You did?"
Zack's semi-permanent smile went bitter at the edges. "... You're not the only one he backstabbed."
There was silence for a few seconds before he continued.
"I know he was crazy -- you know he was crazy, everyone does, you can't miss it. But it was a very... clever kind of crazy. It wasn't like he was all vacant-eyed and flailing around indiscriminately." Zack's voice fell to a whisper. "Wasn't like I could tell myself he had no clue what he was doing. He wouldn't have hit the bull's-eye so often otherwise. Not if there was no trace of him left in there."
Tifa nodded slowly. But then, why had Zack changed his mind? She almost wanted to ask him to skip to the relevant part of his story. She held her tongue, though.
"Would have tried to do something about him -- I don't know, beat him until he kept away, but I couldn't stand being anywhere near him. No one could, except there were some who were too weak to get away. And in the Lifestream you're always touching someone anyway -- there was no vacuum to seal him into, he and that cancerous rot Jenova. Even if you'd had no clue who he was and failed to notice the crazy, it was repulsive, honestly. It was like, you know, he was this ice statue, and sure you don't want to touch it because it's so cold it hurts, and it's full of cracks which might splinter in your face and stab you with sharp bits, but there was that foul thing covering him and seeping in the cracks, and... Urgh."
Aeris hummed her agreement. "It was ugly. So... With the other Cetra, we started working on purifying them, but it wasn't easy. They were so entangled..."
"You can heal insanity?" Tifa wondered.
"No, not really. The Promised Land isn't a place where everyone somehow gets to be happy... It's neutral and peaceful in general, and it... It just accepts you, which helps a lot; but everything that makes a human soul exists in there. Insanity too. But Jenova -- she didn't belong there. She didn't dilute or merge; she just polluted and twisted things, made them hers. It didn't matter how unpleasant Sephiroth himself was; we had to get her out."
Tifa bit her lip. "... Surely, all together... The Lifestream is your territory...?"
Aeris shook her head slowly. "Not even then."
"What?" Cloud stared at Aeris, who sighed.
"We couldn't. She was too strong. If she hadn't exhausted herself creating those three clones and sending Sephiroth's spirit back, but even that -- she kept drawing more and more power from everyone her presence touched."
"Geostigma," Cloud whispered.
"Yes. We almost lost the battle then. If you hadn't won..."
"Yeah, and then you went and got yourself shot like an idiot."
Cloud made a face at the reminder -- so much like Denzel did when his awesome acrobatics on the neighbor's fence ended up with said neighbor politely handing him a hammer and nails to fix it. The sudden similarity made Tifa clench her hands; Aeris shot her a curious look, but Tifa only closed her eyes. It wasn't the time to think about everything they'd built since the clones, about the careful balance of their lives, their strange little family. She could worry about how Denzel was going to take it and what it would do to her and Cloud's peculiar relationship afterwards.
Cloud and Zack were sniping at each other, she wasn't sure about what -- Cloud not having eyes in the back of his head, and Zack not being his personal 'return to life' service, so don't do it again because dragging his not-really-a-corpse from that crushed building to the pool in the church hadn't been the easiest thing in the world.
Cloud sobered up then.
"...You were really there. In the church."
Aeris nodded and smiled at him. "We were there."
"I saw you, but I kind of thought..." Cloud twirled his finger against his temple, looking from Aeris to Zack and back to Aeris again.
"That you were crazy?" Aeris chuckled softly. "We just wanted to make sure you were... Feeling better."
No more Geostigma, no more wondering if dying and taking the burden off his friends wouldn't be the better choice. Tifa remembered that, remembered him slipping away from Denzel and her. Until the day he'd fought and been healed, and then he was back again, and...
Cloud had told Tifa he'd seen Aeris' ghost, once, quietly, in confidence -- and she'd believed him, because they'd seen enough weird things, and Aeris had been the kind of special that made such strangeness unsurprising; but Tifa herself -- never. Perhaps because she never put herself in the kind of danger that required intervention from beyond. And Cloud was -- special, too. She knew that. She acknowledged it.
To Tifa, the last she'd seen her friend had been the day she died before their shocked eyes -- a flash of silver, protruding where silver had no business being; and a surprisingly little amount of blood, and after that, a lifeless body sinking in a bottomless pool. While knowing that Aeris' spirit was still present in some way helped... It had still hurt a bit that Tifa wasn't special enough. She looked down at her foot, swinging absently back and forth over the wooden floor. Pulling free from Aeris' hand now would be too noticeable, and she didn't want to take attention away from Cloud. He needed this talk.
"... I thought you were saying goodbye," Cloud was whispering, pained.
Aeris' voice was just as quiet as his. "We were."
Zack ruffled Cloud's hair, gave him another kind, rueful smile. "We never expected to be able to come back at all. Dead's dead, right? We'd accepted that. We just thought... We'd watch over the lot of you, as long as we could, but Jenova seemed to be all gone and the troubles that cropped up afterwards weren't anything you needed us for. Or anything we could have done anything about, anyway." Zack chuckled softly. "Seriously where do you come off, making mundane enemies who'd rather shoot you than summon rocks from outer space."
"Sorry," Cloud said dryly. "I'll stop antagonizing highwayman packs now."
"Sounds like a good idea."
Tifa didn't say anything for a moment, letting them bask in the deep camaraderie that even she could feel. Eventually, though... She still had questions. "And Sephiroth?"
"Ah. Yeah. Well... When Cloud fought him, Jenova was already unraveling." Zack snorted, thankfully not too sympathetic. "I think he was running on fumes, personally."
"Hah." Cloud echoed his snort, in a way that reminded Tifa he'd once believed to be Zack. The illusion was even more convincing with the original to compare with, and she didn't think Cloud had ever noticed where some of his ingrained mannerisms came from.
"His spirit went dormant as soon as he was back inside the Lifestream, and -- well." Aeris frowned a little, thoughtful. "The sudden loss of Jenova, and the stress of an already fractured mind... He kind of -- splintered. She wasn't there to keep him glued together anymore, and he was out of strength to keep himself functioning even then..."
"Obviously that didn't last," Cloud commented.
"Well, it lasted a little bit." She smiled then, somewhat absently. "It was then that I started getting curious. The bits and pieces of him that floated around... They were... Interesting." She smiled brightly, only making Cloud scowl harder. "So that was when I started hanging around."
Cloud groaned. "You couldn't have let him dissolve in peace?"
"Oh, please relax, I was perfectly safe. He has a very intriguing mind, you know."
"No, I don't." Cloud crossed his arms defensively. "You could explain his mind then."
"Ah..." Aeris looked apologetic. "No, I don't think I can say that much. I saw a lot of very private things... and most of them aren't really relevant to this situation. I'll just tell you two this..."
Tifa frowned and leaned forward, and Cloud tilted his head, waiting.
"He has been rebuilding himself from the ground up. He's -- it's still the same bricks, and the same floor plan, and I am not saying there are no cracks in his mind anymore, but nothing so huge, and -- I don't think any of his cracks were really this bad before Jenova muscled her way in, anyway. What I'm not sure is whether or not he has all his pieces," she added absently.
"That's reassuring," Cloud growled, leaning forward to hold his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. "He's not crazy the exact same way anymore, but still crazy. Just great."
Aeris shook her head. "Not crazy. Just... There are some areas he still needs to shore up."
Cloud snuck her a glance. "You need to give me examples, because I'm not following what your metaphor means in concrete terms here."
Aeris shook her head. "I can't tell you."
"Aeris..."
"Patient-doctor privileges, sorry."
"You're not a doctor!"
"He's still my patient."
Cloud groaned in frustration. "Stop it! Do I need to kill him again, or not?"
Tifa watched as Zack and Aeris exchanged a look that said volumes. "If we thought he'd need killing again, we wouldn't have helped him back," Zack said gently, and patted Cloud's back. Cloud exhaled slowly, eyes closed.
Tifa looked down at her feet. "But does he deserve to be alive again?" She swallowed; it was a little painful. "After everyone he's killed, all the suffering he's caused -- he didn't seem like a very different person to me. Why is he -- why did you two...?"
"Tifa?"
"Why does he deserve to be alive again, and all those he's killed don't?"
Zack and Aeris didn't have an answer for her. Zack chuckled without humor and looked down at the floor, and Aeris watched her with sad eyes that bothered Tifa. Cloud's back was stiff, his head low, face hidden behind his hair.
"It's not about the most deserving, Tifa," Aeris said softly.
"Then what is it about?"
Zack shrugged and gave her a fake-looking smile. "Stubborn as he is, he'd have found a way. He didn't want to die, and -- Jenova or not, he still has a hell of a lot of raw power. Like that, at least it's less traumatic for everyone, right?"
Tifa pulled her hand free from Aeris' hold and clenched it on her lap. That explanation wasn't good enough.
"I'm curious," Aeris said, with a calm, measured tone that explained openly enough, but didn't apologize an inch. "I want to see how he grows, what he will become. What he does with his potential, this time around."
Zack didn't insult her by trying to placate her with a smile again. He was deadly serious as he answered, looking her straight in the eye. "I'm selfish. I love him and I want him here and I'm selfish."
"He killed you," Tifa reminded him. She didn't get it, how he really meant it and how it could even be true.
Zack nodded soberly. "Yeah. Pissed me off. I still love him."
Cloud's back hunched a little more. Zack gave him a sad look, and rubbed gently between his shoulder blades.
"Sorry, blondie. Didn't like shoving all that shit on you."
Cloud's voice came muffled, less by his position than by all those emotions he wasn't letting through. "You did it anyway."
"Yeah," Zack said quietly. "Yeah. Like I said, I'm a selfish bastard. I don't like to let go of those I love easy."
They all sat in silence for a minute, everyone watching Cloud's bowed head. Tifa thought briefly that it was unfair, the way everyone kept pinning everything on him.
But it was him, she knew. As equal as they all professed to be, he had been the heart of Avalanche, the keystone without which nothing would hold up. This time didn't seem like it would be different.
"... Let's sleep on it." Cloud didn't straighten up. "I'm tired. We're all tired. We'll call the others and see what they think tomorrow."
He straightened up, climbed on his feet; Zack's hand fell from his back, Aeris didn't move to hold him.
"Denzel's room is small, so you two can have my bed. If you don't mind sharing."
Sighing, Aeris got up too; smiled sadly. Maybe she was just tired. "It isn't a problem. We'll see you in the morning then?"
Tifa stood to watch them as Cloud walked them through the short distance to his own bedroom door. She met Zack's eyes briefly as he murmured his goodnights, and then their door closed, and Cloud came back to her room. He closed that door too, and then they were alone in a silence so heavy she sank back on the bed under its weight.
There were things she wanted to ask him about, she thought, things they should discuss now, without them. She couldn't formulate a single one properly.
"...Let's sleep, Tifa."
Biting her lip, she nodded without looking at him. She toed off her shoes and crawled back on the bed. The lights went off.
When he followed her under the blankets, she wished it could have been one of those rare times he joined her to make love. She felt around for his hand and squeezed.
She could still feel the warmth of Aeris' fingers, but she didn't know if that was a comfort anymore.
+
Cloud had been asleep for a grand total of three hours when the phone on the bedside table rang. Frowning fuzzily, he grabbed for the receiver, already trying to formulate a way to explain he wasn't taking jobs at the time without alienating the customer forever. Customer-managing was the kind of skill that needed his concentration, so he almost asked the other man to repeat.
And then it clicked and the words made sense.
"Cloud, it's Reeve. We need you and Tifa in Wutai. Yuffie's father died."
+
And in other, tangentially related news:
THIS IS THE COOLEST FANMADE VIDEO EVER. Seriously, i'm in awe. It's a CG thing and it's got the girls from FF7-10 fighting the girls from Dead or Alive and OMG HOT GIRLS FIGHTIIIING. *sparklesparkle* Loved it. Srsly it looks almost professional. i want the next eps so badly. ilu![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
windandwater ♥
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/193489.html?playlist=featured
Still mostly Tifa POV, and I wrote a lot of it while half-asleep -- I swear I can only write this and Crossed Wires when i'm sleep-deprived and not quite understanding what I type -- so unless a miracle happened there are probably small (or huge?) problems with characterization, and there certainly are moments that need to be described more because I went all whee dialogue, and weird syntax and whatever else. if you spot anything that stands out badly, please tell me and i'll fix it. Thank you. ;_;
"... Well! Let's see it," Aeris commented with false cheer as she tugged Tifa toward the staircase, urging everyone to stay moving. "Say, Cloud, do you have a Seal Materia? I'll cast."
"Yeah, several. Tifa? You know where they are; would you mind?"
Tifa hesitated -- she didn't want to leave Cloud and Aeris alone with Sephiroth, and she still didn't know if she could really rely on Zack all that much. But someone needed to get the Materia, and the other ones didn't know where Cloud kept them.
Tifa walked fast into Cloud's bedroom, going straight for the drawer. Her hand closed on several Seal orbs; she released them all until she found the strongest, and then she held it against her chest and went to join them upstairs. She paused and got fresh sheets for the mattress on her way, though. She berated herself all along, but she got fresh sheets, and even a blanket. She would have cheerfully -- well, not cheerfully, but determinedly -- broken the man's neck, but making him sleep in the dust just seemed too petty.
Zack was standing outside the attic door, with his back to the wall, as if standing guard; he smiled at her, friendly as always but with a distracted, worried tint that took away from the reassuring gentleness in it. When Tifa leaned past him to look in, she almost felt like she was peeping, intruding on something private.
There were stacked chairs and stools in there that she ought to repair for the bar, a crate of books and one of mismatched shot glasses, a voluminous wooden wardrobe, Marlene's old toys, and a chest of drawers Tifa kept with the vague thought that Denzel would need it when he moved out. She briefly wondered about how fast the clutter had piled up, about how amazing it was that she could afford to keep said clutter now, instead of paring down to the necessities of the road, or fearing that one day everything she owned would burn, be gone without a trace.
The man who had burned her hometown, and sent her to the slums, and then on the road chasing him, stood there amongst her amassed belongings, looking down at the bare mattress. Cloud watched him without a word; but there was a tension between them Tifa could feel from the other end of the room, even though she could only see Sephiroth's back and had no clue what his expression was like.
"Ah, Tifa -- thank you, I didn't think of that."
Aeris stood in front of the skylight in the sloped roof, breathing in the cool night air. She moved to meet Tifa at the door, and held out her arms for the sheets and blanket; Tifa let her have them, and the Materia with it. She didn't want to come any closer if she didn't have to.
Sephiroth watched the green-eyed girl with a lack of expression that made Tifa shudder. She told herself that if he struck again, Cloud was close enough, ready to stop him.
"Look, you even have a blanket, isn't that nice?" Aeris chuckled, kneeling on the floor to make the bed. "Now move over, I need a little space."
Tifa's fingers whitened on the doorjamb. She didn't understand how it was that Aeris wasn't afraid, that she could make her way to the man who had murdered her so easily, shoo him with such a cheerful tone.
"Hey..." Zack whispered, and his hand touched her shoulder lightly; Tifa jerked and glanced at him, though she couldn't take her eyes away from the scene too long. "It's going to be fine. He'll lie down, she'll get him asleep --"
"He doesn't want to." Even she could see it, and she didn't even know the man.
"He'll do it anyway. He doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway -- see?"
For a tense handful of seconds, Sephiroth stood like a statue, tension gathering in his limbs -- Tifa could read it, that coiled-spring feeling which so often ended in violence. But just as she was about to step inside, the man closed his eyes, sighed, and sank down gracefully. Then he was out of sight, hidden by the chest of drawers. Cloud still stood, watching without a word as Aeris knelt and cast her spell, but the matching tension in his body had seeped out, leaving him looking weary, jaded.
"You okay?"
Tifa pulled her eyes away from the lights dancing on the wall and looked at Zack.
"... I'm fine. Just -- this is..." She shook her head, bit her lip. "... I don't get what's going on. Don't get -- you came back. That's -- that's good, but he came back -- and why?"
Zack sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah, the condensed version's not gonna cut it. "
Aeris muttered something vaguely miffed from her corner, pulling Tifa's attention back. Sephiroth's comeback rang like a vocal eyeroll. "Perhaps you would have more luck if you clubbed me instead. There's a bat in this corner..."
"Oh, you're trying to tempt me, aren't you."
There was no verbal reply, but Cloud snorted.
"You keep that eyebrow down, mister, or I'll do much worse than club you. I'll tuck you in." Aeris cast again before Sephiroth could answer, which was good because Tifa didn't know how long she could take listening to the light, friendly banter between them.
This time there was no answer; Aeris cast a third time, to be sure it took, and then accepted Cloud's offered hand and let him pulled her back up. Cloud cast a barrier around the bed; not a solid one, and they weren't all that resilient from the inside, but Tifa knew he would notice it breaking. She watched them navigate the attic, feeling like she'd end up sitting rather hard if she let go of the doorjamb.
"Tifa?" Cloud asked, frowning. "Are you okay?"
"Ah -- yes, yes. It's just a little..." she said, doing her best to smile at him. It had to be worse for Cloud; he'd suffered so much more at Sephiroth's hands. "You know -- in a way it would be easier if we just had to fight."
Cloud looked at her and nodded, like he knew what she meant. "Mmh. Uncertainty gets old."
Zack sighed, and Cloud gave him a narrow-eyed look, but the black-haired man didn't explain it. "I guess it's time for the long explanation now. Let's go back downstairs and we can talk as much as you need."
Tifa bit her lip. "I'd rather we used one of the bedrooms. The bar is too far down to hear anything..."
"In case he wakes up? Resilient or not, he won't wake up for a while," Aeris assured her gently. "A normal person wouldn't come out of it on their own for at least a week, and I don't think anything could wake him up that wouldn't get our attention too."
Cloud shrugged. "Bedroom's more comfortable."
Zack sighed again, probably because Cloud's reply sounded a lot like an excuse, but in the end he shook his head ruefully and chuckled. "Bedroom it is."
When they walked down the stairs, Cloud touched Tifa's hand and gave it a quick squeeze, and she felt a little better.
There was more space in Tifa's bedroom -- not a lot more, but still more than what Cloud's weapons racks left -- so that was where she led them. Cloud propped his sword against the wall and sat at the head of her bed, leaning a shoulder against the headboard and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. Unable to settle down, Tifa kept standing, watching as Aeris curled up in her armchair and Zack straddled a stool.
"Where to start..." Zack mused.
"How about you tell us why he's with you first." Cloud's body language was relaxed enough, but his tired eyes weren't.
Zack pressed a hand to his heart and winced playfully. "Ouch. That hurts, man. That's your first question?"
Cloud's expression only grew more weary. "It's not that I'm not glad to see you, Zack. You have no idea how bad it was after you died. But you've been dead eight years. Between seeing you again and having him back into the genocide business, it's not even a choice."
Zack's smile melted into a more subdued expression Tifa couldn't read.
"You're lucky he's not gonna be killing people then."
Cloud sucked in an irritated, hissing breath. "But how can you tell? He could be playing a game for all we know. If he needed Aeris to bring him back to life..."
"He did agree to be put under, right?" Aeris countered, voice soft and cautious. "He stayed and he allowed us to make him sleep. Do you really think he would let anyone make him so vulnerable if he wasn't sincere?"
Tifa bit her lip. That was a good argument. She really didn't want to admit it, but it was. It seemed too tortuous and ... low for the proud, arrogant man she remembered. Sephiroth -- the Sephiroth she had known, and granted she hadn't known him much, only that trip in the mountains and then his madness and the details Cloud let slip sometimes, but she thought, even when he was sane, that he would be more likely to tell them what he wanted, and if they said no, he'd skewer them and go get whatever he wanted to get in the first place. He wouldn't bother trying such a complicated, risky scheme when kidnapping and torturing them might work faster and more efficiently, and without having him lose control.
"Maybe he was counting on us thinking that," Cloud replied, looking away from Zack.
Zack snorted. "Seph? Counting on people to have common human decency? That'd be the day."
"He's been in my head enough to guess what I would do by now." Cloud shrugged it off.
Zack gave him a disappointed look. "You don't even believe that, Cloud. You're just looking for excuses to disagree."
Cloud glared at the man, eyes flashing with irritation. "What do you know about what I believe?"
Zack's teeth ground together. "I believe I can't fucking stand it when you fucking lie to my face! What the hell is your problem? Since when am I the enemy?"
Tifa knew what she would have answered -- 'you were the enemy since you sided with the enemy.' It wasn't what Cloud answered.
"What the hell makes him worth it?!"
It wasn't a rejection, line in the sand, you're with us or against us. It was 'did you abandon me? It hurts.' It took the wind out of Zack's sails; he slumped back on his stool, eyes full of sorrow.
"Cloud..."
Cloud had risen too; he crossed his arms and sat back down, looked away. There wasn't a lot to look at, apart from the wall and the corner of Tifa's big armchair, where Aeris coiled. Tifa bit her lip and looked at her, but the green-eyed girl seemed content to watch the scene unfold.
"Oh hell. I think after we came back from the dead it's not unmanly at all to have a goddamn group hug." And with that, Zack slipped off his stool, marched to the bed, and threw himself at Cloud's side with such determination the wooden frame groaned.
Tifa winced a little as Cloud startled under the rough, one-armed hug he was subjected to; watching them, she missed Aeris getting up until the girl caught her hand and tugged. "Come on! Let's join them."
"Aeris--" Tifa tried to protest, to no avail.
"Come on," Zack repeated, "Your presence is the only thing that stands between a group hug and two dudes mantouching on a bed."
Cloud rolled his eyes. "Right. Your arm around my clothed shoulders, it's practically gay porn."
Aeris gave a dreamy sigh. "If only."
"Hey!"
She sat at Zack's side and poked him in the ribs, making him squeak. "Move over, hotshot." Cloud tried to move to the head of the bed, but she reached for his sleeve and held him back. "No, not you. I want my hug too."
Cloud glowered a little, but was just embarrassed enough that by the time he opened his mouth to protest, Zack was already worming his way between his other side and the headboard. Aeris sat down, leaned her head on his shoulder.
Tifa felt the curious urge to excuse herself as she saw the three of them -- Zack and his strong hands and rueful eyes; Aeris with her soft little smile, both leaning on Cloud who sat stiff and straight, eyes closed. His best, most steadfast friend and his -- Tifa didn't have words for what Aeris had been to him. A friend, a flirt -- someone else who'd gone and died on him. Tifa wasn't sure she should be there if Cloud started to cry. Wasn't sure she shouldn't be elsewhere, before the knot in her throat choked her and she cried, too, for things too complicated to name.
But Aeris still held her hand, tugging, gently, stubbornly, until Tifa was on the bed, too, sitting with her shoulder to Aeris. Aeris slid her hand over, shifted her grip, palm to palm, soothing and warm and there.
"... No fair, we can't hug miss Lockhart. You're monopolizing her, babe."
Tifa blushed a little, and Aeris stuck out her tongue at Zack over Cloud's bowed head. "There are only so many places in the middle, you know."
"Should have piled up."
Cloud sighed, and Zack and Aeris instantly sobered up. "You two sound like this is all such a big joke at times..."
Zack growled and wrapped an arm around Cloud's back, stubborn. "Oh, shut up, it wasn't a walk in the park to come back, you know."
"Really? It doesn't sound like it, with how much you seem to care."
"Well sorry if I'd rather be happy to be back than mope and complain about the trip! It wasn't easy, okay? It wasn't easy at all."
"... Yeah?"
Cloud snuck a peek at Zack from under his bangs, head still hanging, shoulders slumped. Tifa felt compassion well up again. Cloud was so much more confident now, it was strange to see him revert to mannerisms from his darkest hours.
"I think," she said hesitantly, "You should just start the story. Don't worry about how long it will take -- just go from the start. There will be time for questions and details afterwards."
Zack nodded, giving her a quick smile. Tifa tightened her grip on Aeris' hand, crossed her ankles and waited, watching them all from the corner of her eye.
"Once upon a time..."
Cloud snorted quietly, a little smile tilting up the corner of his lips.
"Once upon a time, there was a dead guy floating in the Lifestream. Now the Lifestream is kind of a weird place..."
"I was there," Cloud reminded him.
"Miss Tifa wasn't. Shush."
"Actually, I went there too." Zack huffed; Tifa hid a smile behind her hand. "...But not for very long."
"Stop interrupting the story! Anyway, where was I -- okay so I was floating around. And in the Lifestream, you are the sum of your thoughts and memories and personality, and nothing else. And there's no real barrier between your thoughts and feelings and your neighbor's thoughts and feelings. So, inevitably, everyone misplaces bits and pieces as they go."
"I remember that. Get on with it already," Cloud interrupted, though he didn't actually sound all that annoyed. More like he didn't want to think about Zack eroding away too much.
"I really should gag you, blondie. Anyway... By the time Aeris arrived, I was already pretty far gone." Cloud's face went blank; Zack continued, blithely ignoring the downward plunge of his mood. "Being around her, it was easier to remember myself. She remembered me too. Started following her around, keeping track of what you guys were doing, tried to help with the Lifestream... Wasn't in a state to do much with Holy, but by the time Geostigma came around -- but that's later."
He rubbed Aeris' back absently, staring sightlessly at the floor in front of him.
"We were together when Sephiroth came in after Meteor, and... At the same time I was so goddamn proud of you, and how far you'd come, and -- fuck, I wanted to kill him again."
Cloud stiffened and gave him a bewildered look, that Tifa echoed. "You did?"
Zack's semi-permanent smile went bitter at the edges. "... You're not the only one he backstabbed."
There was silence for a few seconds before he continued.
"I know he was crazy -- you know he was crazy, everyone does, you can't miss it. But it was a very... clever kind of crazy. It wasn't like he was all vacant-eyed and flailing around indiscriminately." Zack's voice fell to a whisper. "Wasn't like I could tell myself he had no clue what he was doing. He wouldn't have hit the bull's-eye so often otherwise. Not if there was no trace of him left in there."
Tifa nodded slowly. But then, why had Zack changed his mind? She almost wanted to ask him to skip to the relevant part of his story. She held her tongue, though.
"Would have tried to do something about him -- I don't know, beat him until he kept away, but I couldn't stand being anywhere near him. No one could, except there were some who were too weak to get away. And in the Lifestream you're always touching someone anyway -- there was no vacuum to seal him into, he and that cancerous rot Jenova. Even if you'd had no clue who he was and failed to notice the crazy, it was repulsive, honestly. It was like, you know, he was this ice statue, and sure you don't want to touch it because it's so cold it hurts, and it's full of cracks which might splinter in your face and stab you with sharp bits, but there was that foul thing covering him and seeping in the cracks, and... Urgh."
Aeris hummed her agreement. "It was ugly. So... With the other Cetra, we started working on purifying them, but it wasn't easy. They were so entangled..."
"You can heal insanity?" Tifa wondered.
"No, not really. The Promised Land isn't a place where everyone somehow gets to be happy... It's neutral and peaceful in general, and it... It just accepts you, which helps a lot; but everything that makes a human soul exists in there. Insanity too. But Jenova -- she didn't belong there. She didn't dilute or merge; she just polluted and twisted things, made them hers. It didn't matter how unpleasant Sephiroth himself was; we had to get her out."
Tifa bit her lip. "... Surely, all together... The Lifestream is your territory...?"
Aeris shook her head slowly. "Not even then."
"What?" Cloud stared at Aeris, who sighed.
"We couldn't. She was too strong. If she hadn't exhausted herself creating those three clones and sending Sephiroth's spirit back, but even that -- she kept drawing more and more power from everyone her presence touched."
"Geostigma," Cloud whispered.
"Yes. We almost lost the battle then. If you hadn't won..."
"Yeah, and then you went and got yourself shot like an idiot."
Cloud made a face at the reminder -- so much like Denzel did when his awesome acrobatics on the neighbor's fence ended up with said neighbor politely handing him a hammer and nails to fix it. The sudden similarity made Tifa clench her hands; Aeris shot her a curious look, but Tifa only closed her eyes. It wasn't the time to think about everything they'd built since the clones, about the careful balance of their lives, their strange little family. She could worry about how Denzel was going to take it and what it would do to her and Cloud's peculiar relationship afterwards.
Cloud and Zack were sniping at each other, she wasn't sure about what -- Cloud not having eyes in the back of his head, and Zack not being his personal 'return to life' service, so don't do it again because dragging his not-really-a-corpse from that crushed building to the pool in the church hadn't been the easiest thing in the world.
Cloud sobered up then.
"...You were really there. In the church."
Aeris nodded and smiled at him. "We were there."
"I saw you, but I kind of thought..." Cloud twirled his finger against his temple, looking from Aeris to Zack and back to Aeris again.
"That you were crazy?" Aeris chuckled softly. "We just wanted to make sure you were... Feeling better."
No more Geostigma, no more wondering if dying and taking the burden off his friends wouldn't be the better choice. Tifa remembered that, remembered him slipping away from Denzel and her. Until the day he'd fought and been healed, and then he was back again, and...
Cloud had told Tifa he'd seen Aeris' ghost, once, quietly, in confidence -- and she'd believed him, because they'd seen enough weird things, and Aeris had been the kind of special that made such strangeness unsurprising; but Tifa herself -- never. Perhaps because she never put herself in the kind of danger that required intervention from beyond. And Cloud was -- special, too. She knew that. She acknowledged it.
To Tifa, the last she'd seen her friend had been the day she died before their shocked eyes -- a flash of silver, protruding where silver had no business being; and a surprisingly little amount of blood, and after that, a lifeless body sinking in a bottomless pool. While knowing that Aeris' spirit was still present in some way helped... It had still hurt a bit that Tifa wasn't special enough. She looked down at her foot, swinging absently back and forth over the wooden floor. Pulling free from Aeris' hand now would be too noticeable, and she didn't want to take attention away from Cloud. He needed this talk.
"... I thought you were saying goodbye," Cloud was whispering, pained.
Aeris' voice was just as quiet as his. "We were."
Zack ruffled Cloud's hair, gave him another kind, rueful smile. "We never expected to be able to come back at all. Dead's dead, right? We'd accepted that. We just thought... We'd watch over the lot of you, as long as we could, but Jenova seemed to be all gone and the troubles that cropped up afterwards weren't anything you needed us for. Or anything we could have done anything about, anyway." Zack chuckled softly. "Seriously where do you come off, making mundane enemies who'd rather shoot you than summon rocks from outer space."
"Sorry," Cloud said dryly. "I'll stop antagonizing highwayman packs now."
"Sounds like a good idea."
Tifa didn't say anything for a moment, letting them bask in the deep camaraderie that even she could feel. Eventually, though... She still had questions. "And Sephiroth?"
"Ah. Yeah. Well... When Cloud fought him, Jenova was already unraveling." Zack snorted, thankfully not too sympathetic. "I think he was running on fumes, personally."
"Hah." Cloud echoed his snort, in a way that reminded Tifa he'd once believed to be Zack. The illusion was even more convincing with the original to compare with, and she didn't think Cloud had ever noticed where some of his ingrained mannerisms came from.
"His spirit went dormant as soon as he was back inside the Lifestream, and -- well." Aeris frowned a little, thoughtful. "The sudden loss of Jenova, and the stress of an already fractured mind... He kind of -- splintered. She wasn't there to keep him glued together anymore, and he was out of strength to keep himself functioning even then..."
"Obviously that didn't last," Cloud commented.
"Well, it lasted a little bit." She smiled then, somewhat absently. "It was then that I started getting curious. The bits and pieces of him that floated around... They were... Interesting." She smiled brightly, only making Cloud scowl harder. "So that was when I started hanging around."
Cloud groaned. "You couldn't have let him dissolve in peace?"
"Oh, please relax, I was perfectly safe. He has a very intriguing mind, you know."
"No, I don't." Cloud crossed his arms defensively. "You could explain his mind then."
"Ah..." Aeris looked apologetic. "No, I don't think I can say that much. I saw a lot of very private things... and most of them aren't really relevant to this situation. I'll just tell you two this..."
Tifa frowned and leaned forward, and Cloud tilted his head, waiting.
"He has been rebuilding himself from the ground up. He's -- it's still the same bricks, and the same floor plan, and I am not saying there are no cracks in his mind anymore, but nothing so huge, and -- I don't think any of his cracks were really this bad before Jenova muscled her way in, anyway. What I'm not sure is whether or not he has all his pieces," she added absently.
"That's reassuring," Cloud growled, leaning forward to hold his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. "He's not crazy the exact same way anymore, but still crazy. Just great."
Aeris shook her head. "Not crazy. Just... There are some areas he still needs to shore up."
Cloud snuck her a glance. "You need to give me examples, because I'm not following what your metaphor means in concrete terms here."
Aeris shook her head. "I can't tell you."
"Aeris..."
"Patient-doctor privileges, sorry."
"You're not a doctor!"
"He's still my patient."
Cloud groaned in frustration. "Stop it! Do I need to kill him again, or not?"
Tifa watched as Zack and Aeris exchanged a look that said volumes. "If we thought he'd need killing again, we wouldn't have helped him back," Zack said gently, and patted Cloud's back. Cloud exhaled slowly, eyes closed.
Tifa looked down at her feet. "But does he deserve to be alive again?" She swallowed; it was a little painful. "After everyone he's killed, all the suffering he's caused -- he didn't seem like a very different person to me. Why is he -- why did you two...?"
"Tifa?"
"Why does he deserve to be alive again, and all those he's killed don't?"
Zack and Aeris didn't have an answer for her. Zack chuckled without humor and looked down at the floor, and Aeris watched her with sad eyes that bothered Tifa. Cloud's back was stiff, his head low, face hidden behind his hair.
"It's not about the most deserving, Tifa," Aeris said softly.
"Then what is it about?"
Zack shrugged and gave her a fake-looking smile. "Stubborn as he is, he'd have found a way. He didn't want to die, and -- Jenova or not, he still has a hell of a lot of raw power. Like that, at least it's less traumatic for everyone, right?"
Tifa pulled her hand free from Aeris' hold and clenched it on her lap. That explanation wasn't good enough.
"I'm curious," Aeris said, with a calm, measured tone that explained openly enough, but didn't apologize an inch. "I want to see how he grows, what he will become. What he does with his potential, this time around."
Zack didn't insult her by trying to placate her with a smile again. He was deadly serious as he answered, looking her straight in the eye. "I'm selfish. I love him and I want him here and I'm selfish."
"He killed you," Tifa reminded him. She didn't get it, how he really meant it and how it could even be true.
Zack nodded soberly. "Yeah. Pissed me off. I still love him."
Cloud's back hunched a little more. Zack gave him a sad look, and rubbed gently between his shoulder blades.
"Sorry, blondie. Didn't like shoving all that shit on you."
Cloud's voice came muffled, less by his position than by all those emotions he wasn't letting through. "You did it anyway."
"Yeah," Zack said quietly. "Yeah. Like I said, I'm a selfish bastard. I don't like to let go of those I love easy."
They all sat in silence for a minute, everyone watching Cloud's bowed head. Tifa thought briefly that it was unfair, the way everyone kept pinning everything on him.
But it was him, she knew. As equal as they all professed to be, he had been the heart of Avalanche, the keystone without which nothing would hold up. This time didn't seem like it would be different.
"... Let's sleep on it." Cloud didn't straighten up. "I'm tired. We're all tired. We'll call the others and see what they think tomorrow."
He straightened up, climbed on his feet; Zack's hand fell from his back, Aeris didn't move to hold him.
"Denzel's room is small, so you two can have my bed. If you don't mind sharing."
Sighing, Aeris got up too; smiled sadly. Maybe she was just tired. "It isn't a problem. We'll see you in the morning then?"
Tifa stood to watch them as Cloud walked them through the short distance to his own bedroom door. She met Zack's eyes briefly as he murmured his goodnights, and then their door closed, and Cloud came back to her room. He closed that door too, and then they were alone in a silence so heavy she sank back on the bed under its weight.
There were things she wanted to ask him about, she thought, things they should discuss now, without them. She couldn't formulate a single one properly.
"...Let's sleep, Tifa."
Biting her lip, she nodded without looking at him. She toed off her shoes and crawled back on the bed. The lights went off.
When he followed her under the blankets, she wished it could have been one of those rare times he joined her to make love. She felt around for his hand and squeezed.
She could still feel the warmth of Aeris' fingers, but she didn't know if that was a comfort anymore.
+
Cloud had been asleep for a grand total of three hours when the phone on the bedside table rang. Frowning fuzzily, he grabbed for the receiver, already trying to formulate a way to explain he wasn't taking jobs at the time without alienating the customer forever. Customer-managing was the kind of skill that needed his concentration, so he almost asked the other man to repeat.
And then it clicked and the words made sense.
"Cloud, it's Reeve. We need you and Tifa in Wutai. Yuffie's father died."
+
And in other, tangentially related news:
THIS IS THE COOLEST FANMADE VIDEO EVER. Seriously, i'm in awe. It's a CG thing and it's got the girls from FF7-10 fighting the girls from Dead or Alive and OMG HOT GIRLS FIGHTIIIING. *sparklesparkle* Loved it. Srsly it looks almost professional. i want the next eps so badly. ilu
windandwater ♥http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/193489.html?playlist=featured