Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII belongs to Squenix.

Extremely long author thank-you/honesty-fest: Thank you all for your comments on the last chapter! Thank you especially to those who took their time to leave me a well-rounded critique - I love those more than you know. To be entirely honest, I feel like I could have built up the last chapter more (i.e. Reno's feelings leading to the decision). On the other hand, I was getting tired of feeling like this story was dragging. I felt that everyone (along with their relationships) were becoming static, and I really dislike that feeling, knowing that "my" characters haven't been growing for awhile. They have in subtle ways - ways that may not be apparent if you're not the author. I know that the decision might have seemed hasty to some readers. But that doubt has been with him. To be honest some more, I didn't impress my own pants off with this chapter. I know exactly why, but I can't bring in what's missing quite yet. I know that was probably very "wtf?" to read, so I'll stop now. I hope you enjoy chapter eighteen. Comments are great.

Hidden Ache

"Tifa!"

"What the...?"

Cloud peered into the doorway of the modest house in the middle of the town, where a familiar figure plus daughter were framed. "Hi, Barret."

"Cloud! What're you doing here?"

"Tifa! I missed you!"

"Both of you! Get inside!"

Cloud led Tifa in, their hands clasped together. Each held a small suitcase.

"What're you doing in Corel?"

"Visiting you."

"Hah! Still a smartass."

"Sure, Barret." Cloud smiled.

"Tifa, Tifa! Are you staying here with daddy and me?"

"Yeah - where are you guys lodging up?"

"Point us to the nearest hotel."

"Ah, the both of you can stay here if you want..."

"You're sure?"

"Damn sure!"

"Good, 'cause I was just saying that about the hotel to get you to offer."

Barret laughed and squinted at this changed Cloud. What did she do to you? But outloud, he said, "Come on."

The party of three went up a flight of stairs, Cloud and Tifa with their luggage, Marlene hovering behind them.

"I only got three bedrooms. One's mine and one's Marlene's... Marlene and I could sleep in my bedroom."

"We don't want to impose."

Barret peered at Cloud like he wasn't so sure just what the blonde was implying. He felt kinda funny about Cloud and Tifa sleeping in the same room in his house. He cast a sidelong glance at the two. He knew better than to ask. He'd seen Tifa.

Cloud smiled benevolently at Barret.

Barret grunted. "Hm. I'll let you get settled. I'm talkin' to ya later." He took his leave.

Cloud led Tifa into the room, their hands still clasped. It was almost bare of furnishings, just a closet tucked into the left wall and a little wooden stool. A mattress lay flat on the floor, presumably old and all springs. When they slept, they'd be half a foot off of the floor, but it was better than nothing.

Cloud took Tifa's luggage from her, gently plying her fingers from the handle of the suitcase. She gravitated to a spot by the window while he opened the closet. Surprisingly, there were blankets and towels.

"That wasn't very nice, you know." They were her first words in an hour.

Cloud smiled into the blanket he had in his face. "Well... I figured I'd have some fun with him before we straighten everything out." He dumped the medley of blankets onto the mattress.

She turned around. The hollows under her eyes were deep. She smiled. "I never thought of you as a playful type."

"Mm," he hummed in his throat. They shared a look, too long to be comfortable. He broke the silence to ask of her, "Come on, help me with these blankets."

As they lifted the blankets over the twin bed and made it up as best they could, he could tell she was thinking again.

"I don't think there's enough blankets."

"I'll sleep with a towel."

"Cloud..."

"Tifa."

She looked at him, swallowed nothing, then nodded.

From around the doorway of the room, Marlene retreated to tiptoe back down the stairs.

--

Four nights ago, the door to her bar closed loudly, though she hadn't slammed it. She locked up, taking extra care to ensure the top and bottom locks were secure. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she wouldn't be coming back for awhile.

Her white coat was a piece of clothing she particularly loved because it balanced out the dark waves of her hair and her usually dark bottoms and shoes. But tonight, it got her attention she didn't want. The bright hue was eye-catching, and pedestrians took a moment to look at it - then noticed her face.

She had been crying a noticable amount. The skin around her eyes was actually red, a phenomenon that had never occured to her before. She had just batted at them so much to will them to not cry that they looked swollen. She had tried her best to wipe the tear-streaks from her cheeks and had succeeded, but the eyes didn't lie.

When she reached home, Cloud came to her from the kitchen, the light spilling across the hallway floor to her. Still, she was mostly obscured in the dark.

"So, I was thinking that tonight we could improve my baking..." Cloud looked up from his flour-covered hands. "Teef! What's wrong?"

His question reopened the floodgates.

He rushed to her side, his hand already at the small of her back. Without saying anything he directed her to the sofa and sat her down. The tears flowed down her cheeks in the partial dark.

He wiped his hands on his pants, knowing he didn't want to get flour in her hair, but also knowing that he couldn't leave her.

"Cloud," she croaked, moving to bury her face in his chest.

His hand rose to cradle her head. He asked softly, "Why are you crying?"

After her second, shorter crying session, her voice came, trembling. "Itwasalie."

Cloud frowned. "What was?"

"Everything," she told him, then felt her tears struggling to get out again. No, no... twice was already enough. But, still...

"Everything?"

She closed her eyes tight. Tears leaked out. She felt her friend's fingers wipe them away lightly, quickly.

"From the very start. Everything he told me... everything he did... was a lie."

Cloud knew not to press a person already so emotionally taxed. He knew because it had been done to him, very long ago. Even so, there was a deeply human part of everyone that just knew how much the heart could take. He rubbed her elbow and kept up the silence. He thought that she might choose to fill it on her own.

She did, in bits and pieces over packing. She had convinced him of her need to leave with surprising forcefulness considering her still shaky emotional state. She felt grateful through the sadness that Cloud patiently went along with her, no matter how unintelligible she was.

Cloud had received most of the story, Reno and Tifa's dialogue burning in his mind, and paired with his own viewpoint, he could - sadly - believe what Reno was saying about this whole challenge thing. Still, there was something slightly off. It could be something she wasn't telling him. It could be something Reno hadn't told her. It could be anything. But something still didn't fit right. He grit his teeth while she looked blearily at a wine bottle.

He called Cid. Tifa wasn't up to talking, not to mention she'd get questioned extensively for her voice, which sounded uncharacteristically weak and defeated. He had his arm around her, his hand gripping her upper arm, graced with a red ribbon, all through the phonecall. Tifa bit her lip. He didn't know exactly why, but something told him she was feeling Aerith's loss doubly. To lose two people you cared about, whether they had died or not, within the span of a year and a half... such close occurences and such strong emotional reactions couldn't help but be tied together. He felt it too - the only two women he had cared about other than his mother...

They met Cid some ways outside of Midgar. He was the same gruff Cid. He came within two days of Cloud's call. At the sight of Tifa obviously leaning heavily against Cloud, her hand in his, Cid's eyebrows went up. But he held off questioning, instead climbing the ladder, indicating that they should do the same.

Onboard, Cid trapped Cloud in his room.

"What's up?"

Cloud knew better than to hide anything. It wasn't like it wasn't obvious already. "Tifa's been hurt badly."

Cid raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Not by you, right?" He bit hard on the tip of his cigarette. The tone implicated that if it was Cloud, he'd have a staff wedged in a very inconvenient place. Cloud did not miss the ominous, effortless crack of knuckles.

"No," said Cloud.

"Then who the hell did it, huh?! I don't like seeing Tifa like that. It's unsettling!"

Cloud contemplated his answer. "An old enemy."

"What? Some fuckin' psycho from before Meteor tracked her down or something?"

"No," said Cloud.

"Then what is it?! Stop being so damn mysterious!"

Cloud looked at Cid, his eyes blue in the extreme. "That's at Tifa's discretion. And I don't think you should go pressing her for answers right now."

"I know, don't you think I'm smarter'n that? That's why I asked you." Cid shook his head, but he backed off, knowing that he wasn't getting any answers. He eyed Cloud critically. "So what're you guys doing, huh? You not dating or anything, are you?"

"No," said Cloud, sounding distant.

Cid, not the type for the inevitable small talk nor tight-lipped blondes, clenched his jaw in a crossbite and glared at Cloud. "Look, Cloud. I'm gonna trust whatever the fuck you're doin' right now because Tifa seemed alright with it. If you let anyone lay a wrong finger--"

"Cid." Cloud looked at the pilot, somber. His eyes were still blazing blue. "It's not going to happen."

Cid grunted at the promise in Cloud's expression, appeased for now. "I better get a proper explanation when this is done." He left. Halfway out the door, he muttered a string of curses, rankled.

After they landed in Corel, Cid gave them ten minutes to get off. They needed much less. He was still angry in his Cid way, passively annoyed and holding off the barking at Cloud for Tifa's sake. When Cloud and Tifa had disembarked, he growled/grumbled about giving him a call when they needed to get back, and took off.

--

"Tifa, could you clue me in?"

Tifa looked up from smoothing out the towel Cloud would sleep with tonight. She knew it was silly, but she chose a dark coloured towel, knowing that dark colours absorbed heat better. She doubted its ability to trap heat, but every bit helped.

Barret stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame in a way that he knew wouldn't spook her.

She looked at the floor at his feet and swallowed, her eyebrows arching together in sadness. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything earlier."

He shook his head - forget about it - and uncrossed his arms. "Could you tell me what happened? Why you and Cloud are here?"

How could she tell him? She didn't want to be diplomatic about it, say that 'relations had ended badly with someone' or something to that effect. But she knew that she wasn't strong enough yet to rehash what had happened very well. Cloud - Cloud had seen into the relationship. It wasn't hard for him to understand. Barret was a completely outside perspective. This saddened her, that they had grown so far apart.

"We wanted to visit," she told the floor, curbing off the inevitable. She realized dimly that she sounded very (there was no other word for it) broken.

Barret pushed off of the doorframe and looked carefully at his friend. He took a step into the room. "Hey, Teef. I know we haven't talked for awhile." He paused, running over his next words in his mind. "I'm worried. When you showed up, you didn't even hide it with a smile. I'm not the most... sensitive guy or whatever you call it. But I can tell something's not right here."

That did it.

She took in a wet breath. "Barret..." She strode over to him. He enveloped her in a firm, gentle hug. He couldn't remember the last time she had needed this.

When she pulled away, she wasn't crying, but her eyes weren't exactly dry either. "I'm just so messed up, Barret. I'm glad I have you to freeload off of for awhile."

His laugh was a short bark. "You know I'll be here for you." He rubbed her arm with a rough hand. "Could you tell me, now?"

--

"There's this thing that kind of bothers me," she told him now, staring at the gravel ground.

Cloud sat on the swing next to her. They had brought Marlene to the playground after many long minutes of wheedling. He looked at her with compassion. "What is it?"

Her hands were on both chains, at about the same height her head was at. "It hurts... that he could do that. But... why did it all seem so genuine?"

He leaned his blonde head against a chain of his swing, into her, into the conversation. "I think... that maybe, at times, it was."

She sighed. Getting outside was really a good thing for her, as gritty as the scenery was. That broken look in her eyes faded a little by the minute. He knew it didn't mean she was healing that quickly. But it was reassuring to see after a largely discouraging four days.

"Maybe. But it all started with a lie."

Cloud was silent, not knowing what to say.

"I just feel so stupid, you know?" she said mournfully, but with a bitter smile quirking her lips. "I thought that there was a 'we' there."

Cloud said slowly, carefully, "There was."

Her eyes took on a glazed over sort of quality.

"Tifa!" Marlene bounced into Tifa's field of vision.

She blinked, breaking out of her haze. "Marlene," she replied as warmly as she could.

"Let's get some candy," Marlene suggested, a telling glint in her eye.

Tifa opened her mouth to reply, but Cloud beat her to it.

"I'll take you, Marlene."

Tifa looked at Cloud, a question in her eyes.

"You need to think," Cloud said simply.

Marlene, wiser than either suspected, went along with this. She knew that whatever had happened to Tifa, a five year-old couldn't hope to help very much. She took hold of Cloud's hand, ungloved. He hadn't thought to pack his gloves.

"Come on, Cloud," said Marlene.

"Yeah, okay, Marlene." As they walked away, turning a corner, Tifa could make out Cloud asking, "What's your favourite colour?"

Cloud's voice stuck in her head. What's your favourite colour? And then it hit her over the head again.

What's your favourite colour?

Red. Or white.

She closed her eyes, and forced herself to swing a little.

I think... that maybe, at times, it was.

Oh, how she knew it was true. Reno hadn't lied to her when he'd told her he hated sandals, or that he didn't know what 'scruples' meant. (And maybe he didn't, because he had done this to her.)

He hadn't lied to her when he told her his mother died, or that he missed Tseng. (The thought flitted through her head: would he miss her if she died? But she waved it away and frowned at how morbid she could be.)

No, those parts of him were real. Those were all bits of him that she knew she would never forget. They were all words, all Reno-isms.

She imagined herself squinting her eyes in examination. Yes, they were all words. Had he done anything truthful?

Yes. He hadn't lied to her when he'd bought that paint remover. He hadn't lied to her when she found him at the church that day, an empty bottle of whiskey in his hands. He hadn't lied to her when he'd chased her down to show her the peach billboard. Again, all parts of him she wouldn't forget.

She just knew. No one was that good of an actor. She knew, because she too, was a superb actress. There was only so much a person could fake. She pumped her legs, swinging a little higher.

You couldn't fake not knowing something, because a glint of your eyes always said otherwise. You couldn't fake not caring for someone, because that care always came out at one time or another. You couldn't fake a spark, a necessary, intangible something that carried the both of you along. And they had had that. This eased her mind a little. She had fallen for all these parts of him.

Maybe, she thought, wind through her hair, maybe together with the lie was an overarching truth. And she knew it didn't logically solve anything, but she couldn't ignore it. And the truth was this: each had something that neither would ever see in another person. Without their lie, they never would have seen the truth. That Reno's second toe was longer than his big one and that Tifa hated honey and that both liked red and white.

How this would weigh in her mind was a mystery. How to balance their lies against their truths? Was it possible? Was it possible to measure up one part of a relationship against another? Was it fair?

She leaned back in her swing, feeling that free, heady, upside-down rush. After a half-minute, Marlene called across the playground to tell her not to fall off. She smiled a small smile, but genuine it was. Marlene made her think of Barret.

Talking to Barret had been cathartic. Being able to unload her story on him felt unexpectedly-- what would the word be? She wasn't sure. She hadn't given him any finicky details. But she was touched when he asked how she felt about this or that, his sentiment genuine. He was really trying to help her feel better, and it just felt so good to know he still cared so much. It felt good to know that her world was bigger than she'd thought it was. It felt good to know that they had cultivated a bond that could withstand time, that maybe she had this with someone else and didn't know it. Coming to Corel was the best choice she could have made in that tear-blurred, time-slowed universe of four nights and three days ago. It reminded her of who she was on her own - not just the bartender or the martial artist or the hero.

She dismounted, dragging her toe in the gravel to slow down, and joined Cloud and Marlene. Marlene had about seven small candies swinging in a bag from around her wrist. Tifa looked at Cloud. He was better with kids than she'd thought. Her lips curved into a helpless smile, again small, but real.

And another truth, one she had known for a long time: there was always a we. There were Cloud, Marlene, Barret, Cid, Aerith, Yuffie, Vincent, Red XIII, Reeve, Elmyra, Jessie, Wedge, Biggs. There were her mother, her father.

The truth: even through the wrenching of her heart (and - she clenched her jaw - the possible wrenching of his), there was Reno. He was indefinitely a part of her now. And yes, she would have to return to Midgar and see him and figure something out. She wasn't running away, she knew it from the start. Running solved nothing.

But for now, she allowed herself the time to bounce back. That was what she needed, what she could get here like no place else. That was why she'd come - to remove herself from the situation, just for awhile. She hadn't given herself time in the past.

Marlene waggled her fingers, then took Tifa's. Cloud glanced at her sideways over Marlene's head. Barret, she knew, was looking up from his plans through the window. The red ribbons on their arms, the pink ribbon Marlene wore in her hair, all moved with them.

Tifa let out a soft sigh. Yes, there was always a we.