Finding Tifa

Set after ACC. Elements of Remake. CloTi, my OTP 3

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

He lay awake in his rickety bed and tried to count his breathing forward and backward and all the stars in the night sky he couldn't see through his ceiling, all in effort to quell the wave of anxiety crashing through him, and all in vain. His breathing became ragged, his body began to shake, and panic set in, visible, physical panic, like a black curtain, a weighted one, imprisoning him.

"It happens to me too," Tifa had said, in the weeks after everything had finally come to an end. "Big, deep breaths. You're safe. We're safe. Let it pass."

He exhaled.

The moment passed.

Four days had passed since Tifa went missing.

Since Tifa left.

Since Tifa left you, you failure.

Tifa doesn't go missing.

Tifa always knows where to go.

You're the one who goes missing.

And the one who leaves.

It had been four days, and he was physically sick. It had taken him four days to fall apart, because she left him, left the kids, left her family, left her friends, left her life behind, and did it easily, without a word, without a trace.

Just like he had, when he had done the same, only Tifa probably hadn't had panic attacks in the days following his vanishing, and he had been gone for much longer, and much more cruelly, but none of that mattered, because he was panicking, he was hopeless, he was angry, he was hurt. He was a hypocrite.

He closed his eyes.

They stood in the middle of the Seventh Heaven, Tifa with one arm grabbing the other, a half-defensive stance over her heart, one Cloud had seen a million times over the course of their travels together. He stared at her, then at the toes of his boots, and then back up to her.

"I mean, unless it's going to be busy." He coughed. This could only happen to them. He is the only person in the world who could tell someone he was going to take the day off, and solicit this reaction.

"No! We're so happy!" Tifa looked up at him. She was smiling, but there was something else in her eyes. "I just – you don't have to – to … don't feel like you can't work, Cloud."

"I can work."

She nodded. "I know. I mean…to prove something…"

But I have to prove everything, Tifa. We both know it. Why are you doing this? It's not going to help.

You're doing it because of me. Because if it helps me and it hurts you it doesn't matter to you. I don't deserve that.

"I do have to prove something," he corrected. "And you have to let me try."

She looked down at the wood floors, then back up at him, a soft but genuine smile on her face. "Denzel and Marlene are going to be so happy." She brought her gloved hands together and clapped. "But first" – she gestured to the kitchen – "inventory?"

He opened his eyes and sighed.

He went downstairs to the bar and turned on the lights. It was sparkling clean, because it had been two days since anyone had stepped foot into it. He didn't miss the patrons, even the ones who were kind to him, but his stomach lurched picturing the missing barmaid, and the two children who pitter-pattered around, sneaking fried potatoes and dual horn steak but never a salad of mixed curiel and pasahna greens ("Blergh!" Denzel would always sputter.)

He was cold, standing in the middle of the bar in his sleeping pants and bare feet. He crossed his arms over his chest, wishing they were Tifa's.

"Cloud took us to get ice cream, Tifa!" Marlene danced around the floor of the Seventh Heaven, eyes wild.

"Must've been a big sundae…" Tifa's eyes narrowed but she smiled, looking from Marlene, dancing on the toes of a sugar rush, and Denzel, who giggled watching her and Cloud, who shrugged, unable to suppress a smile himself.

"With chocolate and whipped cream and…"

"Maybe you should go play on the slide and jungle gym in the back," Tifa said. "If you have this much energy, I might have to put you to work…"

"No!" Denzel and Marlene cried out together, and both darted behind the swinging partition to the bar's kitchen and out the back door.

"Sorry," Cloud said, chuckling.

"They're pretty exhausting, you know," Tifa said, a teasing warning in her voice. She moved to a new booth and began wiping it down. "They give a lot of the enemies we encountered a run for their money."

"Give me all the head hunters and spirals," Cloud said. "I just can't stand—"

"—The jumping rabbits," he and Tifa said together. She turned back to him, grinning, and walked over to him, leaving the rag on the table.

"Sometimes I miss it a little, you know?" She gave a playful one-two jab. "Sparring is fine. And I don't miss…you know…The other fights. But …"

"Yeah," Cloud said. "I know."

She turned away from him but he grabbed her before he realized what he was doing, and he pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her. She was so strong but so slight, after all these years. His arms could have wrapped around her ten times.

She seized up.

He hadn't held her like this since before he contracted Geostigma, before everything had begun to fall apart. Before his cowardice corrupted him again, and he ran away, because running away was easier than losing her, even if it killed her, and that's why he was the most selfish, undeserving person on the Planet, and that's why he didn't deserve to be with her, let alone hug her, and that's why she seized up.

Slowly her arms circled around him and he heard her give a muffled chuckle. His heart eased up a bit and he pulled away slightly, though he kept his arms around her. Mako eyes met russet ones.

"Hey…" he began, but the door swung open and in burst Marlene and Denzel, who both stopped before their Cloud and their Tifa, Marlene's eyes widening with excitement, a smile erupting over her tiny face…

"Are y—" she began.

Cloud shook his head and the memory along with it.

Are you?

They were everything and nothing, and anything but normal. He was convinced they were bound together forever, and it sickened him, sickened him that she was stuck with him, that she could have a real family with someone else who could hire help to keep a bar running while she tended to her kids, to her hobbies, to high society. He hated himself for taking advantage of feeling that way, that he could push her down and pull her pigtails and drag her through blood and mud and come home and she'd be there. What is wrong with her? What's wrong with you?

"Are we," Cloud muttered, sitting down at a barstool. If they were, some lover he was. Some couple they were. She was scared of him, even he knew that. He deserved that fear. She had found strength somewhere, after the final fight. Reminded him they weren't going anywhere. And they weren't. They were all right here, even if he was the only one in the bar.

But she was far away. Now and in the past months. Standing right before him, but the ocean between them. Always smiling. Hug here, hand caress there. Genuine concern. He was trying. She knew. She told him it was enough. But it wasn't enough to close the gap.

Why do you put up with me? Cloud folded his arms atop the bar and buried his face into them. How can you be okay with this? Are you too scared to tell me something's changed? To break a promise, even if it means having a real life?

Cloud sighed into his folded arms. Denzel and Marlene had gone five days ago, Saturday, to spend the next two weeks with Barret – standard. The Seventh Heaven was busy that night, he remembered. The usuals, friendly to them both. The handsy men, who Cloud hated. The giggling girls, who he barely tolerated. The next day, Sunday, Tifa smiling at him, running the bar during the day, closing it down together at night. They'd been cleaning. His hand on her shoulder, then tracing lines down her backside, her arms. She'd smiled demurely over her shoulder, her cheeks a little red. He remembered being so unsure. What was allowed? This but not what. Touch but not touch there. Kiss on the forehead, but not on… and his eyes had fallen to her lips, and it struck him long it had been since he'd kiss them… long enough to feel like this was something brand new…

She'd turned away, chuckling about the day, and went back to cleaning. That night he'd gone to his bed, and she to hers.

That night she'd leave, and he'd wake up, and it was just him. He thought she'd come back. He left the bar open. It was an impossible job. He fell asleep. She wasn't there in the morning. He thought she'd come back. He left the bar open, again. It was impossible, again. She wasn't back the next day, and he closed it. She wasn't back today, and he'd closed it.

He felt the anxiety taking control over his body again. Had she ever felt this way, when he abandoned her? It was horrible in ever way. He hoped he didn't, for her sake. He could never forgive himself if she had ever forgotten how to breathe because of him.

Where are you, Tifa?

Cloud is easy enough to handle after ACC and into DoC/beyond (though I'm thrilled the Remake is embracing his goofier, pre-Kingdom Hearts side). It's Tifa who is trickier, and that's a testament to her character. Striking a balance between her strength and her pain is tough. I can't stand her depicted as super-needy and still hyper-insecure about Aerith. So here, I hope, I present that version - and this couple.