Chapter Text
At first, Cloud did not notice that anything had changed in the fractured landscape in which he was trapped. It was a strange place. He was surrounded by paths that mostly led to nowhere, though some led to places that were familiar. A water tower. His childhood home. The entrance to Nibelheim.
He sat at the nexus of the paths. Immobilized. Trapped by the images and memories.
Just a moment before, he had been in control. Present. He had been calling a name. It had been the most important thing to him in his entire, mixed-up world. But now, he cannot remember the name or why it had been so urgent.
Nothing here seemed permanent or whole. He saw things, heard things, felt things. At times they were so real. Other times, he was certain they were only illusions and lies. But how to tell which were which? He could spend an eternity here and never figure it out.
It was hopeless and nonsensical. The images came, the images went. Some he could remember, but other he could not. They only left him with a lingering headache and a hangover of strong emotion. Sometimes sorrow. Sometimes fear. On occasion, joy so all-encompassing that he did not bother wondering if it might have been true.
But it was so wonderful that he sought out the feeling again and again. Sometimes he found it amidst the pain and confusion, though it never really lasted.
There had also been a different place that he sometimes visited. A place where he had been solid, but unable to move. Where he felt a gentle touch, heard a soft voice. One he could not place but it was always the same.
Who was it? Who? And why could he no longer feel them? Where did they go? He gripped his head in his hands. It felt that he might fall apart, trying to remember. His head swept back and forth as if he might find the answer.
A distant part of his mind registered footsteps.
Another vision, preparing to pull him in? That was the only thing that made sense to him, though nothing here followed any kind of logic. The footsteps were so close that he had no choice but to acknowledge them. He looked up in their direction.
To his surprise, the sounds belonged to a person. Someone he knew. It was –
Long, dark hair. Brown eyes with a hint of red. Set in a face that was familiar, so familiar. When their eyes met, she cried out. Her familiar face crumpled in pain, relief, despair, joy. So many emotions on one face that is the only face he had seen, truly seen in what must have been an eternity.
She fell to her knees beside him. Her face, so close to his. In what could only have been a second or two, Cloud saw a lifetime in it.
A small girl with a sweet, smiling face bursting through the door of his childhood home. Cloud, let’s play! A bit older, outside with three other boys by her side. A mountain path, a bridge. Her face, shocked and frightened as she falls. She screams.
The face of a teenage girl. A really, really pretty one. Whenever he sees it, his mouth goes dry. His heart thuds in his ears. He cannot meet her eyes, much less talk to her. But he sneaks looks at her as they sit, legs dangling as they perch on the water tower. Alright, he tells her. I promise.
Her face, beneath a cowboy hat. A smile that is sassy and bold. It draws him in. It makes him want to move closer. It makes him want to run and hide. So, he does hide, beneath a helmet. And yet, he cannot look away. Then, the hat is gone, and her face is crumpled with pain. When he cups his palm against her cheek, there is blood staining his glove.
A woman’s face. So beautiful that even still, as an adult, he cannot help but stare. She smiles at him, giggling and self-consciously stretching her arms. I’m really glad to have you back, Cloud. Really glad. The force of her smile shakes him. He stares at the door, thinking of it, long after she leaves. It almost makes him feel like himself.
You saved me before, now it’s my turn. The words and her face pull him in. He looks at her eyes. Looks at her lips. They move together, leaning in closer.
Fireworks flash. Gold illuminates her face. He is stunned by her. Awed. Uncertainty crosses her face, and he cannot stand it, so he reaches out his hand. A shy smile blooms on her face as she tentatively takes it. The way her eyes drop to his lips. The way they close as he moves his face closer to hers.
A first kiss, but not the last.
Her face glowing in the light of a sunset. Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking. His lips do not say a word, but he uses them to tell her what he is thinking all the same.
The sleepy smile on her face when he comes late at night. Cloud, you’re home. He kisses the words from her mouth. The smile she gives him from across the room, head tilted, teeth tugging at her bottom lip. A silent beckon that pulls him in closer. And closer, until her face is between his hands and he claims that bottom lip for his own.
Her face against rumpled sheets. Cheeks flushed and eyes closed. Her mouth falling open, gasping words that make his mind go blissfully blank of everything except for her. His fingers tracing her face, beneath his, her hair spread beneath her. She turns her face into his hand and presses a kiss into his palm.
And it was her face. He knew her. Of course he did. Who else could it be but Tifa? She had been here with him all along, after all, but only in bits and pieces. Images, words, snippets in time. Bits and pieces of memories and sometimes a song.
Tifa’s face, so young, smiling back at him as they race around the water tower. Tifa’s face, still young but mature, ducked down to nuzzle the top of an infant’s head. Tifa’s face with eyes that crinkle at the corner just a bit when she smiles. Tifa’s face, wrinkled and precious to him, against a soft pillow in the bed where they said their last goodbyes.
In her face, an entire life. In her face, his entire life.
But then, there were the words. The bad ones. The confusing ones. Words telling him he was not real. Words telling him she was not real.
A puppet.
You know I killed her. She’s not Tifa.
Among the words spoken by another were the words he had spoken himself. Regretful yet distant. An apology and a farewell.
And especially you, Tifa…I’m really sorry.
I never lived up to being your Cloud. Tifa…maybe one day, you’ll meet him.
Not real. He was not real. Maybe she was not real either.
Next to him, Tifa reached out, her face full of emotion. Only a moment had passed, and in the next, she was going to touch him. He wanted it badly, but he was also afraid. It would consume him, it would be too much.
He could not help it. He flinched away from her. His hand lifted between them, blocking his face. Blocking her face from his eyes. It felt like both a loss and a relief.
The images and the words went away. He heard his own breathing, ragged and labored. His heart thudding in his ears. But no other sounds. Tifa did not speak. She did not try to touch him. But he could sense that she was still there. Still close.
He dropped his arms, just a bit to sneak a glance.
Still there. And still, to look at her was like looking at the sun. Bright and powerful. Painful. Sure to burn him out entirely. A need to look and a certainty deep down that he should not.
Yet, he could not stop himself. Again and again, his eyes were drawn to her before darting away. In this ephemeral place, she seemed to be the most solid thing in existence. Everything else was insubstantial and floating, but Tifa had gravity. And she pulled him in.
He stopped fighting it.
When his eyes settled on Tifa, she was sitting so very still. He took her in slowly. Hands, bare without her gloves, clasped tightly in her lap. Almost as if she was restraining herself. Slowly, he lifted his eyes. To her shoulders, hunched uncertainly. And then her face.
There was pain on it.
I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to say. You’ve been so good to me.
“Tifa?” he asked. “You’re really here?”
The sound of his voice seemed to startle them both. Until that moment, Cloud had not known that it was possible to speak here. Though her eyes widened with surprise, Tifa stayed as still as possible, her face smooth and calm. She nodded, slow and careful.
“I am,” she said.
Why was she here? And where exactly was here?
This place. Memories fractured around him. Images that made no sense. The future and the past bombarding him. No way of distinguishing between the truth and the lies. No way to tell which was true and which was false in the beautiful and terrible things he saw.
A swirling light. A current that flowed in no particular direction. The Lifestream. Where all life came from and returned.
Another memory. A flash of light. Falling. Pain, then darkness. After, he was here.
Of course, he was dead. That was the only thing that made sense. He had died and was now stuck in the Lifestream, trying to make sense of the true and false things that he saw. Punished with the words that never went away. And if he was dead, that meant –
Suddenly, he felt something other than confusion. He felt, all of the sudden, hollow and sad.
Tifa had been watching him, patiently. He nodded at her.
“You’re dead too, then.”
The words made her flinch. Cloud cringed away from the sudden movement, wary she might reach for him. Terrified of what he might see if she did.
But instead, there was only stillness and silence again.
Outside of his own volition, his hands had risen protectively around his head. He lowered them. Turned his head back to Tifa. She was unmoving, but as soon as his eyes met hers, she released a deep breath, then spoke.
“We’re not dead, Cloud. At least, I don’t think we are.”
The words reached his ears, then seemed to float away. It was natural, likely, to deny that you were dead. Tifa had only just gotten here. She had not yet seen the things that he had seen. Soon, she would know.
“How did you die?” he insisted.
Pain on her face, and a sharp, insistent shake of her head.
“I didn’t,” she said. “We fell into the Lifestream. Have you been here all this time, Cloud?”
Cloud? The echo of a cold laugh.
He has no name. He was not even given a number. As I said, a failed experiment.
Once, the voices made him cower. They were like daggers stabbing into him. But now, they were beginning to feel like old friends. Failure was a familiar state for him. Tifa’s words, the way she said his name gently and with care, that was what was unfamiliar and new.
He frowned at her.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Huh?”
Her face was pinched and confused. He titled his head. A faint memory. Walking away from her. Tears streaking her face. On her knees, collapsed with grief on a rock-covered floor. Leaving her. Maybe the real Cloud would have been incapable of walking away.
“Cloud. Stop calling me that.”
Tifa’s voice, when she answered, was so soft he almost could not hear.
“It’s your name,” she said. “What else would I call you?”
A good question.
He is a failed experiment. A puppet.
Please…His own words, begging. Give me a number?
There was no number. He had no name. She could call him a puppet, she could call him a failure. But she would not. She was Tifa, and she was too kind. To her question, he could only provide a shrug in reply.
“I wasn’t given a number,” he told her.
Her mouth hung open for a second, before snapping shut.
He had answered Tifa’s question, but Tifa had not answered his. Why was Tifa here? And how, exactly, had Tifa died? Maybe Tifa would not answer, but the images were always there. The ones that were good were elusive, but the bad ones seemed to never go away.
Blood. So much blood. Flying off a blade. Splattered against his face.
Blood. So much of it. Pooling on the floor, staining his glove.
Tifa’s blood? Where had it been? Flung from a blade, spattered across his face? Or pooling on the floor? Where he knelt, resting his hands on the ground. When he lifted it, so much blood. Yes, that must have been it. It was –
“Five years ago. That’s when Tifa died. Sephiroth killed her. I saw her wound. All the blood.”
His hand was palm up before him. He looked down at it, imagining it. The wound and the blood. Hands lifting her, eager to comfort if it was too late to protect. The grief of it all.
You know I killed her.
Five years ago. Then, why was she here now?
A stabbing pain in his head. His hands dug into his hair. No, no, no. Not so many years ago. How could it be, when Tifa was here before him now? When she had been there, not so long ago, trying to help him. Desperate to save someone who was so clearly not Cloud.
A mistake. A dangerous mistake.
“No, that’s not right. It was at the reactor in Gongaga. It was me. I pushed her down into a pool of mako. Or were they stairs?”
He could see it now, Tifa before him. A blade in his hands.
She fell into mako. She fell down the stairs. There was so much blood and sometimes there was not any blood at all. Either way, there was a sense of grief, a sense of failure. Unfathomable pain and loss. Tifa, gone. But whose fault and how?
A blade, but whose blood? Blood, but whose blood? A pit of mako? Or were they stairs?
His hands gripped his hair, compressing into his scalp then tugging. An angry motion, bidding him to focus, compelling him to remember. Every version of his memory was terrible, but he was desperate to know which one was true.
The agony was overwhelming. His teeth were clenched together, but from his mouth managed to escape a pained, inhuman howl.
Hands on his. Gripping them tightly, pulling him close. For a split second, they stabilized him. Tifa’s hand. Warm, callused but also soft. Grounding and safe. Bringing him back to himself, bringing him back to her.
But the images were too strong. They swept him away, and Tifa was swept away with him.
A mako reactor in Nibelheim. Tifa at the top of the steps. A blade slices her. Sephiroth’s. Blood sprays as she falls backwards and down the stairs.
That happened. But something else happened too. There had also been –
A pool of mako in the Gongaga reactor. Tifa on the edge. A blade slices towards her. Cloud’s. It just misses her as she falls back and into the pool.
Two different events. But sometimes, they are one and the same. They swirl together, as things so often do in this place. Hard to say which one was true. There are so many different versions of the truth, and they flash in his mind.
Tifa is falling into a pool of mako.
A flash.
Tifa is falling down the stairs.
A flash.
The blade just misses.
A flash.
The blade slices her and blood sprays.
A flash.
His mind was reeling. The fragments, the flashes. Each one, terrible on its own. But even so, his mind reached to find sense among the chaos. It searched for a plot, trying to weave the images together into a single, coherent story to tell.
Tifa, on the edge of a pool of mako in the Gongaga reactor. A blade, heavy in his hand. One single movement, an arching slice. Blood spraying from her chest. Tifa falling backwards, into the pool of mako.
A soft, startled sound. Hands tugged from his own. In their absence, he nearly descended into a dark and terrible spiral. It was where he belonged after all, for the things he had done. He belonged with the terrible images, in this convoluted place, suffering and alone.
But then, the hands were on his face. They tugged his head level, forced him to look up from where it was sweeping back and forth, focused on the ground. His eyes locked onto Tifa’s. She should have been angry. She saw what he did.
Her words when she spoke, held no anger. They were quiet and they were sad.
“That’s not what happened,” she told him. “Sephiroth is the one who hurt me. Five years ago. Remember, I showed you the scar?”
Yes, a scar.
Beneath a shirt, carefully lifted. On a rooftop amid carelessly spoken, suspicious words. His eyes landing on it before looking away, sick with the horror and the shame of it all. Her pain exposed and vulnerable, bare skin in the cool night air. One thin line, her only defense against his accusations.
She has no scar. She’s not Tifa.
Lies. All lies. Scar or no scar, he had not believed her. Tifa or not Tifa, he remembered the heft of the blade in his hand. Blood or no blood, he could not remember. Of one thing, he was certain. He had swung at her. He knew that he had attacked.
Tifa falling. Blood on his face, blood spraying from her chest. Falling, falling. Into a pit of mako, down the stairs. Did it really matter which, if the end result was the same? Either way it was his fault, either way Tifa was dead –
Suddenly, Tifa’s hand was on his. And his hand was on her.
Her warm palm held his hand in place with surprising strength. Beneath his own palm, the soft, warm skin of her stomach. The words and images went away. There was nothing else. Only the feel of Tifa, surrounding him, on top of and beneath his hand. Her face, so close. Full of concern, her eyes carefully watching him.
Eyes locked on his, Tifa grabbed his fingers and moved his hand up, just a bit. Slowly, she dragged his fingers back and forth. Under his callused fingertips, there was a ridge of skin. Different from the delicate, perfect skin that surrounded it, hardened and smooth.
“Sephiroth gave me that scar,” Tifa said. “It’s old. It didn’t kill me. I survived it. It healed a long time ago.”
An old scar. A healed scar. Healed, because Tifa survived it.
Cloud flattened his hand against her again, needing to feel more of her. Needing for what she said to be true. Desperate for he reassuring warmth of her beneath his hand. The soft yield of her skin to his fingers and the firm resistance of the muscle beneath. Tifa pressed her hand atop his, holding him even closer.
Together, they closed their eyes. The images came again. But this time, Tifa held him in place. An anchor against the relentless waves in a sea of confusion. With Tifa holding him in place, the images were clear. The images made sense.
Tifa is at the top of the steps in the Nibelheim reactor. Sephiroth’s blade slices her across the torso and blood sprays as she falls backward down the stairs.
Tifa is on the edge of a pool of mako in the Gongaga reactor. The blade in his own hands just miss as she falls backwards into the pool.
He opened his eyes. Tifa’s were closed, but her face looked determined as she squeezed Cloud’s hands, pressing his fingers into her skin.
A wound survived five years ago. It left a scar.
An attack, days ago. She had survived it, forgiven it. It left no visible scar.
When Tifa’s eyes opened to meet his, there was a transparency in them. Nothing between the two of them, no physical space and no lie. Together, they saw the truth.
“That’s right,” she whispered. “That’s what happened.”
For a moment, they were both still. Their eyes locked together, Cloud’s hand flush against Tifa’s skin. But then, Tifa’s eyes went distant. They began to move, flicking rapidly back and forth. Tifa was still there with him, but she was seeing something else.
Cloud understood well enough what Tifa was experiencing. After all, he had been here for what felt like several lifetimes or an eternity. But for once, Cloud was not seeing anything. He was only feeling. Feeling Tifa, there beneath his hand. Solid and real and there with him, right here in this moment.
Why was the feel of her so familiar? A feeling like she was part of him, a feeling like she was his home. And why was it that as he touched her, there were things that he just knew?
Like the way he knew if he slid his hand sideways, to dance along her ribs, exactly how she would giggle, breathless against his ear. The playful way she would chide him, protesting that he knew she was ticklish there. And if he moved his hand up, the way her breathing would change and how her body would arch into him as he held her.
The scar was beneath his hand, but he knew too how it would feel beneath his lips. How her hands would feel tugging at his hair as he buried his face into her stomach as his lips traveled downward. The way her skin would taste on his tongue.
A gasp from Tifa.
It was not the type of gasp he expected, based on the sensations flooding his head. In unison, they both pulled away. Cloud stared down at his hand, still warm from Tifa’s skin. When he looked up, Tifa was staring at him, blinking and confused.
“I thought I saw –”
She stopped, lost for words.
But she did not need words to explain. Cloud understood exactly what it was she had seen and felt. All this time, he had been here. He knew how it was. There was not much he could do for Tifa in his position. But this, at least, he could explain.
“It’s like that sometimes here,” he said. “You see things. Feel things. But sometimes you can’t hold onto them. If you try to look too closely, they’re gone.”
The images and the emotions. All the things you wished were true, and all the things that you prayed and prayed were not. They came and they went. In some ways, you got used to it. Or at least learned not to resist the way it ebbed and flowed.
But in other ways, you never got used to it. For every joyful image, there was another one that hurt you and made you feel afraid. Fractured images that confused your senses. The details blurry and ambiguous enough that no matter how unlikely the images were, always you would wonder if maybe they might be real.
He tried to explain it to Tifa.
“But some of them won’t go away.” He grimaced. The worst images always stuck around. “Sometimes you get stuck. You see the same things over and over. And the things you see don’t make any sense.”
The earnestness of his voice surprised him. There was a question in his words, or maybe he plea, but he was not sure what it was. None of it seemed to surprise Tifa, however, who only nodded, looking thoughtful. Her eyes drifted off to the side as she contemplated his words.
For a while, her eyes went distant, lost in memory or perhaps only in her own thoughts. But after a moment, they turned back to him and her head tilted curiously.
“You’re trying to find yourself, aren’t you?” Tifa asked.
As she asked the question, she shifted toward him. A space had opened up between them from when they had pulled away from one another. Every muscle in Cloud’s body tensed, jumping at her sudden closeness. But Tifa did not try to touch him. Instead, she rested on her hand on her lap, leaning her head sideways to peer into his face.
“Cloud?”
She said the name tentatively, as if fearing his reaction.
But he did not protest. He let the name wrap around him, not yet a name that he accepted as his own, but a question just as Tifa had asked it. He was, in fact, trying to find himself. Still, he was not sure if he was Cloud. But Tifa seemed to think it was so.
For now, he would not argue.
“Cloud,” Tifa said again. “Five years ago. In Nibelheim. Remember how you told us the story in Kalm?”
All too well, he did. The painful story recounted. Flashes in his mind when his memory failed. Sharp pains in his heart when his memory was all too clear. Then after, the words exchanged between Tifa and him. The way they had hurt one another with their words, in ways he was not aware that they could before.
In her lap, Tifa’s hands squeezed together. She lowered her gaze to them.
“That’s when I was first certain. That something was wrong.”
Tifa nodded, a small and certain motion. It was not directed at Cloud, but rather a movement to reassure herself. He watched, fascinated, as a calm resolve fell over her. Her lips flattened into a neutral, determined line. Tifa’s eyes tightened just a bit at the corners, but the way she looked at him was still soft and reassuring.
Slowly and intentionally, Tifa reached out her hand. Her palm hovered between them, an unmoving and unspoken invitation.
“My memory of it is different,” she said.
She made the confession without looking away. As the words left her, so too did some sort of burden. Perhaps the burden of truth too long hidden away. That night in Kalm had been days ago. With all that had happened between now and then, it felt as though it had been longer than that, weeks if not months.
All that time, Tifa’s truth hidden away. He could see now that it had worn her down. Between them, her hand shook slightly. With weariness, perhaps. Or maybe in fear that he would reject it, push it away.
“Would you help me figure out what actually happened?” she asked.
Cloud heard the request. It reached his ears, but it seemed to go deeper, beyond what he heard and straight into what he felt, tugging at his heart. The question, the plea, spoke to something deep inside him. Something that he could not refuse without also completely denying himself, who he was at his core.
He felt himself straightening. His hand reaching before he knew just what it was he intended to do. It hovered just above Tifa’s. When he looked up to meet her eyes, her lips tipped up at the corners. She smiled.
It was her smile he focused on as he lowered his hand. Before either of them were ready, their palms touched. Together, they tensed. Only moments earlier, they had been overwhelmed with visions the second they made contact.
But this time, nothing happened.
Well, almost nothing. It could not be called nothing, the way that Tifa curled her fingers around his. The way it made him feel solid and grounded and ready to stand.
Carefully, they both got to their feet. As they stood at the crossroads of several possible paths, their eyes were both drawn toward the gates of Nibelheim, just ahead. Hand in hand, they approached. It felt right. Though he did not understand why, it seemed to Cloud that this was where everything began.
And more than that, it felt right to approach the gates of five years ago with Tifa. To stand by her side when she had asked him for his help. He may not have known if he was just a puppet or the Cloud from Tifa’s childhood. But in this, he knew exactly who he was.
If Tifa held out her hand, he would take it. When she asked for something, he would give her whatever it was she needed. He did not know why, but something deep inside him told him that the answer of who he was his not only in his tangled memories, but also in the desire to help that tugged inside him and the slender hand clutched tightly within his own.