Author's note: Many thanks to those who took a chance on a single-post prologue. I hope this is worth the wait. New readers – well met! And I hope you enjoy this offering.

Having done the pretty then – read on, do.

~Gyre

Disclaimer: Square Enix owns FFVII, story, history, world, characters and all appurtenances thereof. I have borrowed Vincent, Tifa, Cloud and everyone else to tell a story of my own, but I have no claim on them and make no money from my muses' efforts. I promise that all characters will be returned to Square thereafter with all traumatic memories excised (game characters coming as they do with that handy reset button :-).

-Hope's Rest-

by

Gyre/flight

Chapter 1 – Faces in the Darkness

Tifa. She looked so broken, lying there. Crumpled in on herself in uncharacteristic fragility. Damaged in a way that superseded the merely physical.

For all Vincent had seen her endure, everything he had watched her confront, he had never before seen her without hope. It disturbed him, he who had thought that there was nothing left in the living world that could do so.

She had fought through the worst that fate had thrown at her, sought out danger, courted loss - all from a certainty such as he had never had, a certainty that things could be better than they were, a certainty that if she fought hard enough, fought long enough, if she simply refused to admit defeat… then she could make them better. Not once had she given up, no matter how bleak the future that came hunting her. Not once. Not for her own life when death had its clawed fingers tight about her throat; not for the man she loved when all reason said that his fate was sealed; not even at the last when all seemed lost, all sacrifice in vain and all courage come to nothing, shattered and broken on the rocks of fate.

Cloud, they had followed, unlikely leader though he might seem. Misfits, rebels, outcasts, strangers all, he had been the one they chose, and not a one of them had regretted that choice. And yet… It was Tifa who smoothed the innumerable frictions that inevitably arose between so many ill-assorted companions, Tifa who was always there to offer what was needed, be it helping hand, willing ear, sparring partner, or just the comforting warmth of a wakeful presence in the shared solitude of darkness. It was Tifa whose care let them feel the ties that held them all together without chafing at the restriction. And it was from Tifa that each found their own hope sparked anew when the shadows closed in. Even Vincent, whose in-curled heart had not touched any emotion so sure and clean since Lucrecia's death, even he had recognised the bright echo she evoked and been content to follow in her what he could no longer feel for himself.

That echo had rung itself silent, and in the dark stillness that remained, he could finally recognise what had disturbed him so. For Vincent, though he had never known it until now, hope had worn her face.

She was strong and brave and dauntless, a hero such as he had never been. And something had stripped those things from her. Tremulous muscles and fearful eyes and the despair of the damned – he recognised too well what he was seeing, and never and never and a thousand times never had he ever wanted to see it on another face. Especially not hers.

He was not, normally, at a loss. For the most part he stepped so lightly through the world that he barely touched it at all…and it barely touched him. That was the trade-off. He walked alone, forever the detached observer, safe and solitary behind his ever-watchful eyes. There were very few people who had ever reached through his defences to touch the real Vincent…and there were even fewer who knew it.

A friend, she had said. I really need a friend. And she had come to him.

Such truth was not to be questioned. There was nothing to be done but accept, and try to be worthy of the gift.

Crouching beside her, he reached out to slip the travel-battered boots from her feet – and paused. Experienced eyes moved across the recumbent form in front of him. Tracked the crusted scabs of grass slices and the raised pink and white welts of the brush swipes that marred long legs and smooth arms. Picked out the dark smudges of old bruises, the rucked skin of scrapes and the red chafe marks from clothes worn wet and walked dry.

Something wrong. Indeed.

His gaze sharpened, but careful scrutiny revealed nothing worse, no serious injury hidden beneath the superficial damage, only a myriad of small, avoidable hurts. That in itself was…odd, something to be expected from a city-soft novice who knew no better – but not from an adventurer as seasoned as she.

More evidence. Something had hurt Tifa badly; something that had knocked the light from her great dark eyes, as neither injury nor enemy nor even Armageddon had managed to do. Something had sent her fleeing headlong through the night, heedless of her own safety…

No danger, she had reassured him. And, Nobody following me.

His instant assumption had been the obvious one – an enemy of some kind, safely evaded. But it didn't quite fit. Not for Tifa. However, he could imagine a more ominous reason, and it was the one thing that might well leave such broken distress in its wake.

A black gloved hand hooked out his PHS and flipped it awake, sharp eyes checking through the illuminated display screens for each of the scant hand and a half of people scattered across the world whose lives mattered to him - until they widened in shock, snapping suddenly aside to the slow-breathing woman on the couch.

They were all there, each life-sign glowing healthy green – all but one. Tifa's slot was…black. Blank. Not, despite his initial instinctive reaction, greyed out - dead – but simply empty. Gone. He hadn't known it was possible to disconnect someone remotely from a manual network, but that was what he was looking at. The AVALANCHE PHS system no longer included Tifa.

It was not the answer he had feared to find, but if it didn't yet clarify the situation, at least it added to the information he was building with. Vincent rarely saw the need to trust in coincidence, and this was looking increasingly like something else entirely. What, exactly… well, that was harder.

He considered, fingers hovering briefly over the call options before moving past them, and in a moment the shiny high-tech conundrum was decisively closed up and tucked away once more.

To the best of his knowledge they were all safe and unharmed, both those whose data had hummed quietly from the screens beneath his hand, and the one whose quiet breathing had reassured him. Even as exhausted as she had been, if there was anything he needed to act upon, she would have made sure to tell him. He trusted that. Trusted her. Whatever had happened, it was done, and beyond help.

For now, it didn't matter. Whatever had driven her to his door and left her lying there so pale and still and strange, she was under his care now. And that was not a trust he would fail. Not ever again.

The heavy bowl of water steamed gently as he carried it to her side and set it down beside her head. The addition of a tranquilliser and a few phials of healing potion sent sweet herbal-scented steam into the air. An old Turk trick, but effective; Vincent could hear her breathing ease almost immediately under its anaesthetising influence.

When he was sure that the steam had had time to work its soothing magic, he reached again for a booted foot and carefully loosened the laces before pulling the resisting footgear away. The sock beneath was crusted with blood, stuck fast by broken scabs of fresh red and cracked black and unpleasantly yellowed green.

He'd been afraid of this. At least it wasn't quite bad enough to warrant a casting. Even benevolent mako-based intervention was always a shock to the system, and under the circumstances it was probably better just to clean the wounds with the gentler solution and let natural healing run its course.

Patiently he soaked the material away from tender skin and teased it free from the heavy scabbing. Although he watched her carefully, Tifa showed no sign of waking as he peeled the sock down to reveal the oozing mess of burst blisters, raw flesh, and swollen, unhealthily coloured skin that lay beneath. Infection was not a pretty thing.

Walking must have been agony – but for all her unsteadiness, she had made no effort to save her poor feet from further injury. That alone told him just how dangerously far beyond her limits she was operating. And from what he had seen in her eyes, not merely the physical.

Enough. What skill and will could mend, he would.

It had been a long time since he had bothered to carry standard first-aid supplies for his own sake, but improvisation had always been one of the chiefest skills of a survivor. A clean cotton sheet was rapidly and efficiently reduced to long ragged strips suitable for bandages, and the unused polishing cloths from his gun kit were sacrificed without regret; soft and absorbent, they made perfect swabs.

In private, with no curious eyes to pry, he could turn both hands to his task; the one pale and strong, long fingered with the elegant tensile strength that had been his birthright, the other hard and sharp and golden, cold and sinister as only metal can be. Hojo's gift, that. Hojo the hated. Hojo the mad. Hojo the damned.

Hojo the dead, Vincent reminded himself with bleak satisfaction.

Too many years had given him a surprising delicacy of touch with the thing, and with a job to do, he could shunt aside his automatic flinch at the sight of dagger-fingers against warm tanned skin. Given a choice, he would never have touched another human being with that clawed monstrosity. It was Hojo's, and no work of that man's mind could ever be counted either trustworthy or safe - Vincent himself most certainly not excluded. Given a choice - but he didn't have a choice. Too many tasks required two hands, as Hojo had very well known. Grimly, Vincent closed his mind to everything but the necessity of the moment.

Cleaning out such infection was a painful and messy process for its subject, and he found himself relieved that Tifa was so deeply unconscious, though it was a worrying indicator of her exhausted state that she didn't react by so much as a flinch even when the swabs were coming away thick with clotted matter and dark with blood.

It took several changes of water, and no small number of the degradable phials from his recovery supplies, but finally he was satisfied. Her poor abused feet were safely poulticed and encased in professional looking bandages, and knowing the risk of infection for someone in so depleted a state, he'd cleaned and tended even the most minor of her other incidental hurts.

Finished, he rose to his feet and regarded the object of his ministrations. Already she looked a little less frighteningly pale. Sleep would be better for her now than anything else he could do.

It was the work of moments to cover her with the few thin blankets which had been provided by the parsimonious landlord, and easy enough to ease her head forward enough to slip the flat pillow beneath it. Tifa didn't stir, slack and unresisting as a rag-doll across his arm. In this state, he knew quite well that she could as easily have slept on the bare wood floor and had as much good of it, but he still frowned slightly at the sight she made, wishing he could do better by her than a cold couch and skimpy coverings.

One last thing then. A smooth movement lifted the cloak from where it lay across the back of the chair behind him and with incongruous gentleness he draped it around her, leaving no space for the chill night air to creep in. Red and heavy it covered her from nape to toes. Still asleep, she snuggled deeper into the welcome warmth until only the night-filled hollow of one eye and the soft curve of a cheekbone were visible.

Vincent settled back into the shadowed chair where he could watch window and door and sleeping woman, the massive deadly weight of the Death Penalty cradled ready in his lap. He still didn't know nearly enough, and it was not in him to make an assumption of safety without good cause.

The thought that had never left him flared its question bright across the rippled surface of his mind before steadying to a solid and unwavering glow.

Tifa. Who has done this to you?

xXx

The sands at twilight glimmered softly silver, hugged by the gentle violet shadows of sweeping dunes under a star-blued sky. Smooth sea-murmur rose and fell between them, as regular and reassuring as a lover's sleeping breath.

They walked in silence, he and she, save for the small susurrus of dry sand whispering underfoot. The last hard sparkle of light from the town was swallowed by the marram-spined dunes, leaving only the wistful shimmer of sand and sea and sky.

"This is what you wanted me to see, is it?" Cloud's voice was almost teasing as he bumped his companion gently with one shoulder.

He was rewarded with a low laugh. "Yes." Tifa brushed a long skein of hair back from her face as she lifted her eyes to catch his. "It's so peaceful here…" And if anyone needs peace it's you…

"Peaceful…"

They had stopped, and the hot blue gaze was for a moment focussed on a vista far beyond the infinite horizon. He didn't notice the brief anxious glance that tested him for troubles unspoken and cares worn too tight. He never did.

She waited a little, willing to give him the thinking space he needed, but wanting also to be sure he knew there was someone waiting for him when he returned. There were too many places even in her own mind where she would not care to wander alone.

"Cloud?"

"Hmmm?" He came back to her with an easy grin that banished her concern. "Just thinking," he shrugged off the question and raised an eyebrow to her. "You?"

"The same." Her turn to look away – and to miss the suddenly speculative look cast in her direction. Long absent mischief sparked across his features as he gave in to temptation. Had she seen it, the urchin grin that split his face would have warned as much as it warmed her – but as it was, she was caught completely off guard.

"Last one to the dune's a hairy chocobo!" he yelled over his shoulder, already running.

"Hey! No fair!" Tifa was laughing even as she spun to the chase.

The sand was deep and dry and fine, almost impossible to run in, and they both found themselves slipping and tripping and half-falling, breathless with laughter at the ridiculous joy of it all.

She was less than half a step behind him when Cloud reached the rise of the dune and skidded to a halt in a spray of sand. "Hah! I won! I won!" he laughed, blond hair bouncing as he twirled an imaginary sword in a particularly silly – and annoying – victory pose.

He really had no one but himself to blame, Tifa thought with satisfaction as she accidentally happened to hook his legs out from under him and send him sprawling gracelessly to the ground.

"You cheated!" Her accusatory scowl would have been more effective if she'd managed to control the hiccupping laughter that was making it hard to breathe as she looked down at his sandy, rumpled form.

"All right, all right! I surrender!" Cloud let himself flop back onto the side of the dune and pasted a pathetic look onto his face as he groaned in mock pain.

Tifa poked him unsympathetically with one foot – and jumped back smartly to evade the return grab that would have spilled her onto the sand beside him. "You'll have to do better than that, sword boy!" she growled, waggling a reproving finger at him.

"Sword boy?" a disbelieving Cloud choked out, "Sword boy?You have been spending way too much time with Yuffie…"

"Shut up, you," Tifa was red faced and sniggering herself. "I was provoked – and if you ever tell anyone I said that-"

"Don't worry," he answered mournfully, leaning back on his elbows. "Nobody would believe me anyway."

"Damn straight."

"Oh God. Now she's channelling Barrett." Cloud shook his head dramatically and raised pleading eyes to the sky. "No more, please. I promise I'll never do it again."

"Hah. I'll believe it when I see it," Tifa proclaimed, tossing dark hair back from her face.

They both laughed, and Tifa dropped the act to settle herself comfortably beside her friend. It felt so good to be here and now, to be able to relax and laugh and fool around together without the weight of the world bearing down on them…to just be happy. Simple pleasures – but dearly bought.

Perhaps only those who had endured such a burden, only those who had felt all the light and life and laughter crushed out of them could truly appreciate the value of such small and precious joys. Or perhaps not. It wasn't important.

Life was good.

The two of them sat side by side, not quite touching, their backs against the dune as they looked out to sea. The echoes of shared laughter warmed them both.

"You're good for me, you know." For once it was Cloud who broke the silence. The old shyness had brought the blood up in his skin and a defensive half smile to his lips, but intrinsic honesty and hard earned trust helped him keep his gaze on her face, even as her startled eyes turned wide and open to him. The concealing dimness lent him courage, softening the distance between them. This once, perhaps he could finally do something right.

"You make me feel normal, as if I can laugh and play and just be happy for no reason-" An unaccustomedly bold finger quelled the words she would have spoken in return, resting feather-light on her part-opened lips as he finished in a heartfelt whisper, "You make me believe. You make me believe I'm real."

Tifa…stopped. Breath, blood, thought. There was nothing but the slight roughness of his skin against her lips, nothing but the warmth of blue eyes against the darkness, nothing but the brush of words against bare soul.

"I remember you. For so long, watching you, wanting to know you-" The finger slipped away from her mouth as his hand curved around to cup her cheek. "And then later. You trusted me, followed me, fought beside me…"

His voice dropped further, the low tones slow and careful and more intimate even than the caress. "And now. We've had this time, time to walk together and talk together, to just be ordinary together. You've reminded me how to laugh, and shown me how to cry – and I do know you."

Cloud swallowed hard, but it was unexpectedly easy to let himself trust the moment and simply let the words flow out of him. "You're brave and loyal and generous, and…" Another pause. "…And beautiful."

Tifa didn't dare think. She could feel the tiny tremble in the hand against her face, and part of her was aware of how hard it was for him to say this, do this, but the rest of her was frozen. She couldn't react, couldn't hope, couldn't let herself guess the next word he might say. She could only listen, and try not to know that the next instant might see her shattered, iced glass waiting to feel the first touch of scalding steam.

"You've given me so much," he continued, so softly that Tifa could barely hear him. "I don't know why you would want me, but-"

And then, finally, she could move. Her own hand rose to hold his fingers close as she leaned into his touch, turning her face slightly to brush her lips against his thumb in an almost-kiss. It was impossible to tell which of them was trembling more.

"…Cloud?"

His other hand alighted on her shoulder, weightless and wary as a butterfly settling. They were so close now, close enough to feel the warmth of breath on skin, close enough for each to see the flutter of the other's pulse, close enough to-

"Tifa…I love you."

The words were out, and Cloud's smile was all surprised relief as he discovered how simple everything was once they were spoken. No more choices now, no struggle, no words fighting to rise up in his throat every time he opened his mouth to speak…only Tifa in front of him, Tifa as he had never seen her, almost glowing with joy, and so beautiful that his breath caught in his throat as he looked at her.

Smile met smile. A dream in the darkness, too bright for belief.

Neither of them knew who reached for whom first, but both felt the shock leap through them as body touched body. All thought of dreaming dispelled in an instant, for this was suddenly, achingly, physically real. Breath shuddered and eyes went wide with a new-woken knowledge that had nothing to do with words and everything to do with the unspoken whisper of skin on skin.

The kiss that followed was sweetly awkward, wondering and wonderful, and when they pulled apart it was to no more than the distance of a hand's breadth.

"I love you too, if you hadn't guessed as much," Tifa half-laughed up at him, no longer caring if he saw the hot blush across her face, the hotter emotion in her eyes.

Cloud grinned back at her. "I did sort of get that impression…"

"Hmm, better late than never, I suppose," Tifa responded, but the apparently grudging words were belied by the radiance of her smiling face.

She had never felt such pure joy, leaping bright and lovely through all that she was and would ever be. The world was as it should be, and nothing dark could touch her here.

She couldn't seem to stop smiling, couldn't pull her hungry gaze from the beloved face that was finally hers to look at for as long as she wanted. Such luxury, such unsuspected pleasure… Not to have to steal her glances only when his attention was elsewhere, not to collect his expressions like flower-petals pressed in a secret book, but to meet his eyes freely and openly, unafraid. Not to have to hide herself from him…

Leaning back against the security of his hold, she tilted her head to see him better as she relished the feel of his arms around her, his hands warm against the small of her back. Delighted, her own hands slipped around him in return, finding the sweep of his ribcage, the dip of his spine, shapes that only her eyes had ever traced before. Almost involuntarily, she hugged him closer, loving the solidity of him, the reality of him. Hers to hold at last.

She looked her fill, delighting in his smile, the open happiness in his eyes that was just for her. Too many times she had tracked the scars of darker emotions across that face that was more familiar than her own. Too well, she knew the shapes of guilt, of shame, of fear. Too often she had watched him turn inward, turn away from her, and too often she had been forced to leave him to face his private pain alone.

No longer.

Acetylene eyes glowed in the darkness, glorious with the warmth of an emotion she had barely dared hope to see there. She couldn't look away, didn't want to look away: everything she had ever wanted was right there in front of her.

And then she saw it. Deep within the swirling crystal flame of his eyes, a dark twist of sharp and alien emotion.

Regret.

Her heart stuttered. Regret? Cloud's face had gone puzzled, still smiling beneath that jagged shock of hair, but uncertain now. He must have felt the sudden rigidity in the body he held so close, but Tifa couldn't spare a thought for his confusion as she forced herself to hold his gaze, unblinded by the searing joy of a moment past.

She hadn't been mistaken. Determination she saw, friendship, and a deep and loving care, but not lo- Not what she felt.

Had felt.

Emotion ran dry. The protection of shock. She'd taken wounds before, had watched the warm blood flow and never felt the pain - she knew what this was, and knew that she would pay for it later. This excoriating, aching, emptiness where reaction should be. She was suffocating, drowning in air, laid bare like the seabed at ebb tide - no, nothing so natural. This was the drawing power of some great wave, a tsunami of the soul, and out in the blackness she could feel it gathering, racing towards her. When it hit she would be ripped apart, broken, battered, destroyed utterly.

She had to get away, had to-

Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came. She pushed herself backwards, recoiling away from him, and the hold that had seemed so certain fell away like the illusion it was as she stumbled on sand and caught blindly for her balance, unable to tear her gaze from that once-beloved face.

"Tifa?" Concerned now. Too late.

Clear. Everything was clear. Too clear. After all, she had been watching Cloud Strife for long enough now that she could have written a dissertation on his reactions and motivations. Regret. Regret that he didn't- didn't feel as she did. Determination to try. To give her what she wanted, because he could. Because he cared for her. Because he wanted her to be happy.

She strangled back the impulse to laugh, knowing that it would have come out as a madwoman's cackle. Knowing that if she broke now, neither of them would survive the aftermath unscathed.

"Tifa? Please- What's wrong?" Cloud had gathered himself to his feet, was watching her with that look of hurt and uncertainty which had always made her want to comfort him, reassure him that nothing was his fault, that everything would be all right, that whatever was wrong could be fixed…

Not this time.

A hot flash of anger ran through her, leaving her sickened by herself as she ruthlessly quashed it. It wasn't his fault. He just didn't understand. But she did. And because she understood, it was her responsibility to make the right choice. Responsibility… She was always the responsible one. Because she could see the consequences.

Blindness would have been kinder.

Tifa Lockhart loved Cloud Strife. Simple. Easy. There was no room for doubt there, no choice for her to make. The question had been equally simple – did Cloud love her back? His answer should have closed the circle, and whether it left her safe within his heart or outside in the cold dark, she would have accepted her place in the pattern.

She had never foreseen this, never imagined that she might have to distrust the very answer she had dreamed of. That she might have to choose again, might have to weigh her heart against a far different question. Not just whether she could live on a lesser love than she gave, but whether he could live on that lesser love, however willing he was to make the sacrifice-

Sacrifice. She was his sacrifice.

Nausea threatened.

You've given me so much…Gratitude from a friend had warmed her heart, but now it rang false, sounding horribly like the acceptance of a debt come due.

I love you. Words she had dreamed of hearing, words that she would have waited forever for – if they were only true. Except it wasn't even so easy as that. He had given her a truth wrapped in a lie, and she had heard only the lovely lie, and not the truth beneath. I love you, he had said, knowing it was true, and knowing that it was not the same truth that she was hearing. He did love her, his precious, patient, faithful friend… he loved her enough to give up his own happiness so that she could have what she wanted. But he hadn't understood. It wasn't her happiness that she most wanted. Or even theirs. It was his.

She loved him. Loved him as he was, without need of anything but honesty in return. She would have taken the bitter to keep the sweet. Would have stood beside him in friendship for as long as he wanted her there, would have watched him fall in love with another and offered smiles of genuine happiness across the hidden shards of a broken heart. But she couldn't deal with this…this misborn thing, this devourer of innocence, this choice that was ripping her apart.

He had done this to her. With his good intentions. With his kindness. With his lie.

One lie, one white lie, and everything was changed. The truth would have hurt, but it couldn't have hurt as much as this. Nothing could. That he didn't love her as she wanted, that she could have borne. But to promise her heart's desire under false pretences, to let her find a lie in place of that most precious truth…

'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' She'd never realised how true that was until now. Now that she was there.

She had to get away from him. Before she tried to hurt him as she was hurting, or before she succumbed to temptation and took what he was offering. She didn't know which she feared most.

The twilight that had seemed so embracing was suddenly as alien as the man before her, lending an almost unearthly beauty to the puzzled face looking into hers. Perilous beauty, as heartless as the hollow hills.

It wasn't him. It couldn't be him, not her Cloud, this was some fey creature from beyond her nightmares. Cloud would never hurt her like this.

Except that he had.

"Cloud," Tifa didn't recognise the sound of her own voice, "you didn't have to do this, not for my sake."

"Tifa?" Tentative now, too often repeated, her very name become a question…but that was because Cloud was finding it very difficult to recognise in the woman standing before him the same laughing lover who had been looking up into his eyes a moment ago. This woman might have been a stranger standing in Tifa's skin. She couldn't have been further away from him had she been standing on the dark side of the moon.

"I love you. With all my heart." The words echoed between them, hollow and dead, disconcertingly empty of the emotion that should have animated such a statement…and only the more frightening for it. "I can't help it. But you…" Tifa had to stop for a moment, had to catch hold of herself, had to rein in the rising emotion before it ran wild and broke them both.

"Love isn't something you give away, like a treat to quieten a crying child. You either mean it. Or you don't." Quiet, calm words, they resonated through the twilight with the finality of a drowned bell tolling beneath the sea.

"But, Tifa…I do love you-" Cloud's automatic response fell flat. Even he could hear the unconvincing defensiveness of the words drying in his mouth.

"I know." Sad and still, Tifa was a wraith in the darkness, the gentle words drifting on the night air, cutting him like razorwire.

Black glass eyes looked through him as if he didn't exist. As if it hurt too much to see him. And finally Cloud started to understand what she was saying. What he had done.

Her eyes- He shivered. Such warm eyes she had, so full of light that however dark it became, they never seemed to lose all of their colour…but now they were as black as blood beneath the moon. He had done that. Him. He had put out the fire in those unquenchable eyes-

"Goodbye."

Caught in his own frozen thoughts, he didn't register the meaning of that single, calmly spoken word until it was too late. He had forgotten just how quickly she could move when she needed to.

"Tifa!" Cloud started after her fleeing form, but stumbled to a halt after only a few steps, stopped by the horrible feeling of wrongness in the action. Nothing could have made a more bitter contrast with the playful, meaningless race that had started it all. Oh yes, he could chase her down. He might even catch her – but then what? Tifa had run away, run from him… The thought hurt, horribly, clinging like quicklime to raw flesh.

"Tifa! Please! Come back-" he called desperately – but she was gone, swallowed by the night. The world had turned, time moved on, twilight faded into black. And it had taken Tifa with it.

Already, the twisted dents of her fleeing footsteps were collapsing in on themselves where they pocked the once serene sweep of pale shoreline, rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the random patterning of wind and weather.

He could hear the tiny shivering of sand-grains sliding under their own weight, the distant whisper of the waves, the hiss of the sea wind through the salt-grass…the harsh rattle of his own breathing loud in his ears. Nothing else. No one else.

He was alone.

Tifa was gone. He could feel the yawning emptiness beside him where she had been. He hadn't realised how much he had come to depend on her, how much it meant to him just to have her there… Until now. Now that there was no warm presence at his side, no reassuring bulwark between him and the ravages of memory, no understanding eyes to offer comfort in the dark places.

He had only been trying to do the right thing.

He should have known better. Everything he touched turned to slag. Beauty broke in pieces at his most tentative touch. Failure. Destroyer. Betrayer. Poisonous words seeped into his consciousness. Tifa had helped him beat them back once before…but Tifa was gone, and there was no one left to stand beside him now. He hugged them to himself. He deserved the pain.

He had done it again. Hurt someone who trusted him beyond reason. Failed someone whom he should have protected at all costs.

"Tifa…" he whispered to the empty air, "…I'm sorry."

Cloud fell forward like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Head hanging, shoulders shaking with soundless sobs, he was oblivious to the world. Sharp mica cut at his splayed hands, unforgiving as ground-glass. His knees ached, protesting their careless impact with the ground. Cold struck up at him from the night-greyed sand. He noticed none of it. The night around him was less real by far than the nightmare within.

Cool moonlight caught slick silver on his face, cast into sharp relief the pitted dark spatters beneath him as the salt sand drank his tears dry. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

It was never supposed to be this way.

xXx

[-end chapter-]

xXx

Author's Note

Oh dear. Poor Cloud. And poor Tifa.

There usually is more going on beneath the surface than is visible at first glance…

Thoughts, anyone?

~Gyre