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To Tifa, the dazzling crimsons and golds of the fireworks that swelled and popped overhead were still a far cry from the boundless constellations that washed over a sleeping Nibelheim.
Those deep blue nights left a longing in her chest. Of stolen glances and fumbled admissions. Of childlike wonder and innocent dreams. Where her heart didn’t pound like the fireworks roaring above then sputter out like the gondola’s engine coming to a halt.
Tifa had taken Cloud’s hand in her own as they walked through fluorescent lights and polished attractions. The hyperactivity of the Gold Saucer had subsequently drawn their bodies closer together, their contact as natural as it came in times of danger.
Bouncing from booth to booth, pulling him along with only a gentle tug of her palm, Tifa could get used to. The easy willingness of his fingers to be wrapped in hers Tifa could get used to. Even the way his lips pressed into the back of her hand for the sake of second-rate play she could get used to. It was the unspoken and far off places those invasive green-tinged eyes of his would stare off into that Tifa couldn’t shake.
She thought about Nibelheim and its clear cerulean skies. Nibelheim and its water tower. Nibelheim and its boy who lived next door who had the audacity to steal her heart when she was thirteen then disappear with it for seven.
Tifa surrendered. “Sometimes being old friends is hard.”
If she hadn’t known Cloud any other way, wasn’t thrown by his change in demeanor as an adult or didn’t feel attached to the only other living survivor of their shared hometown, maybe she would have had the courage to say what was obvious. Though, wickedly, her misfortune of continually losing everything good in her life might have been just about ready to cycle again.
So keeping his hand in hers was enough. The shy stroke of his thumb against her skin whenever he wanted to get her attention was enough. Enough to soothe her quivering nerves and convince her that it was okay she didn’t speak those tired feelings of her into existence, words which, if she really tried to condense them, couldn’t have been anything other than I love you .
~ ~ ~
But I love you became muddled when Tifa felt the singe of fire against the tips of her hair and smelled the sickening burn of her quaint home in flames.
Nibelheim was rich blues and hazy greens, slow mornings and mellow nights. Never had arson nor massacre ever been conceived in the same breath as Nibelheim, and neither had Tifa ever wanted to lay witness to it for a second time.
She knew exactly what to expect at the gates of Nibelheim five years ago, who would appear in the photo she posed for before journeying up the mountain, the names of the two SOLDIERs who came with her, knew that she never saw Cloud there.
How could Tifa’s memory align with Sephiroth’s deception? The same Sephiroth who had nearly taken her life in that cursed mako reactor, murdered Aerith, and was bending reality to break Cloud’s will.
Cloud made sense. Despite the wariness around his presence and the suspect nature of his story ever since he materialized in Midgar, Cloud was a figure in Tifa’s life that was, to put it objectively, correct. Without Cloud, there was no next door neighbor, no one to have found her runaway cat, no one to have met with at the water tower.
But what Tifa needed was Cloud’s reassurance, not the other way around. Cloud was posturing wholly unaffected by Sephiroth’s illusions yet the next moment begging for Tifa’s validation that he exists.
To place that weight on her…
Naturally, Tifa did what she does best. If Cloud was to be confronted with memories that contradicted his own, she’d tell him to cover his ears and close his eyes. If Cloud pleaded with her to give him some semblance of truth to hold on to, she’d turn away and ask for some time to think.
Because she never knew what to do in these situations, she did nothing at all.
Cloud fell to his knees in pain, nails digging into his hair, bemoaning his missing memories until he snapped back into his usual self.
“Let’s go, Tifa. I’m alright.”
Her finger curled just loosely around his, not having had the conviction to hold tight nor the heart to let go.
~ ~ ~
Tifa’s clothes sagged and clung to her skin, the damp weight enough to pin her to the ground. Her hair matted and was drying chaotically to her forehead and cheeks, mako trickled out of the shells of her ears.
The lifestream was the nature of the world. As things live and die, begin and end then begin again. The intersection of all life, it had brought Tifa back home, to Nibelheim where her existence first began to interweave itself with Cloud’s. Because Cloud was a figure in Tifa’s life that belonged.
The lifestream agreed. Cloud’s psyche had cemented that that fact went both ways.
Cloud was there. Outside her window, fallen off Mt. Nibel’s cliffs, inside the mako reactor. He filled gaps in Tifa’s own memory and gave her answers to questions she hadn’t had the mind to ask herself in years.
And in the lifestream Tifa felt herself come together. From the childish country girl to the inner city straggler. Atrophying muscle and a sinking loneliness gave way to a warm bar floor filled with people sharing like desire. A happiness that Tifa would fight hell itself to keep. That happiness, too, shattered. That darkness, too, was Tifa.
And in the lifestream Tifa was tested to keep going despite the pain of things dying and dying and ending and ending. To keep on living, just like Cloud was finally given a chance to do for the first time in a long time. She saw the blue waves of Nibelheim’s skies in Cloud’s eyes, the same he’d always carried since he was a child. She also saw the green of the mako reflected in his eyes, the one he would someday come to make peace with.
Their hands clung to each other tight as they drifted upward to the surface. The light as they approached stung.
“People have so many things pent up inside themselves.” She was barely lucid enough to hear herself speak.
Tifa craned her neck up to find a recovering Cloud laying close. She promptly let gravity work to drop her head back on the sand.
Barrett threatened her to keep her eyes open. For the first time, Tifa was content to let exhaustion overtake her.
~ ~ ~
The airship above brought back memories of the last time Tifa saw hunks of metalwork sitting in the sky. New things were, if not scary, at least better.
No more plates looming overhead meant striking suns and immeasurable open fields, absolutely unfamiliar and uncharted. The fall of Shinra meant no more Shinra. A falling meteor would catastrophically mark the end of her small existence which, through a microscope, wasn’t a crushing tragedy.
But then would come the subsequent loss of Marlene. And Barrett. And Nanaki. Yuffie, Cait Sith, Vincent, Marle. Of Cloud. Tifa’s little world had grown again, and was again nearing collapse.
But fear wasn’t present. Not at the impending world’s end, nor at the sliver of a chance at a vague future—the after, which, really, was the most unpredictable element.
In fear’s place was Jessie’s confidence. Biggs’s acuity and Wedge’s optimism. Aerith’s courage and the innocence of a young girl who had the big idea to get swept off her feet by a brave knight.
Whatever new things their triumph against Sephiroth brought, Tifa wanted all of it. Including this feeling that pressurized and sparked, longed and waited in her bones when she was with Cloud.
Cloud spoke in long pauses before her, metaphors and gazes at the horizon. Words decorated though not as direct as the end of the world might warrant.
Under the Highwind, Cloud deflated. “I guess nothing’s changed at all.”
Tifa encouraged him.
Cloud’s hands were nervous as he fumbled to touch her, altogether too cautious and achingly not enough.
He’s yanked her around her before, thrown her out of harm’s way, pushed her into safety. Not a second thought was ever given then because danger was danger. Actions were necessitated.
They were misaligned, old puzzle pieces not fitting snug together after years of wearing away. Never quite on the same page. Always turning back or reaching blindly forward to find the other. Their timing off.
But now they were both so… present. And that made all the difference.
Tifa wrapped Cloud’s hand in hers, wedged her finger into the crook of his thumb to get him to uncurl his loose fist. She set his open palm over her chest where she knew her heart was bursting hoping he could understand it, how everything’s changed.
~ ~ ~
What then? When the world ended?
Well there was the piece of cardboard Tifa would diligently dust off with her fingers before sleep each night. (She’d be lucky if Cloud fell asleep next to her and could lean on him for cushion.)
Also the scrap hauling and road clearing. She’d never felt as tired as when Marlene’s legs couldn’t keep up their trek and Tifa dragged her own sore feet one block with Marlene in her arms before surrendering to her knees and plopping in the shade. Barrett suggested carrying Tifa over his shoulder. Tifa insisted on going to sleep and not being woken until morning. (Cloud had carried her on his back.)
There was the endless bartering around every corner. People trading off what little possessions they owned for something with utility. For food. For clothes. (Goodbye to her hairband, a man had wanted it to fix a loose pipe.)
Then there was the persistent weight in her mind like a headache. One that was most difficult to address and easiest to ignore by sleeping, debris moving, and negotiating for basic necessities. (Some days she felt it deep into her rib cage.)
When the world fell apart on Midgar, physically, it was a lot of tidying up. Emotionally, it was a lot of tidying up. Keeping quiet when the neighborhood volunteers spoke of sending their kids to their first day of school when the plate dropped. Chewing on questions like what good really came from securing a hypothetical future if millions of real people had to suffer for it now. They didn’t even get a choice. Tifa struggled to justify hers.
Meteor was gone, Sephiroth dead, Shinra destroyed. There was no celebration, no fireworks or applause. Just the dirty, bloody, fuming, electricity cracking, pipe leaking aftermath.
“It’s not like you to be troubled by your thoughts.”
Cloud’s words went in one ear and out the other, Tifa’s eyes fixated on Marlene’s sleeping form while her mind ran away. She mumbled something, completely nonreassuring, a dejected answer.
And it felt wrong of her to be slumping in this way when everyone else was pushing and trying to keep themselves together. Even Cloud, whose grip on her hand was so firm and confident that Tifa took a heavy exhale and wanted to try it too, living on.
~ ~ ~
And in those next years, Tifa became an expert in all things breathing.
When the sun first began poking through the slats in the upstairs windows, it’d be routine to already find Tifa brushed and stretched, laying down a thin-cushioned mat in the family room with her legs crossed.
She had picked up meditating again, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. The air moved throughout her lungs deep and slow. On days she was tense or anxious, the inhales came shallow and the exhales rough. She let those days be, it’d even out eventually.
Seventh Heaven became a local fixture in Edge, with the silly little saying it was the place to be to take the edge off. A bottom of the list shoutout in the newspaper’s “Shop Small” feature brought new faces into the bar.
Orders came in, drinks went out, drinks spilled, money miscounted. It was a work in progress where most days felt like more work than actual progress. Each mistake felt personal.
Tifa balanced herself, tried not to snap when she was overwhelmed, didn’t take it out on Cloud or the customers. Patience. In and out through her nose and she would step out onto the bar floor and try again.
Sometimes though, Tifa’s everything felt claustrophobic. Her place of work just underneath her bedroom. Marlene and Denzel crowding her at the dinner table. The calls made to Strife Delivery Service that never stopped coming and the incessant ringing noise it made. The nightmares that replayed behind her eyelids and kept her awake at night. The sadness that crept up on her in moments of quiet during the day.
The land shifted and caved when defending against Meteor, and Tifa found she enjoyed walking along the new cracks formed in the earth. Sometimes they led to sinkholes, rarely it led to a nascent river bank where Tifa would from then on go to watch water trickle. The stream would go on to become stronger and fuller as she kept returning. A space of her own to breathe. A place to exist when existing became a bit too much.
There was also Cloud who by far drew the most erratic breaths out of Tifa those years after. He would leave her winded and heaving when they trained together, gasping for air when she was able to best him.
Sometimes Cloud liked the high of being in control, of having her sighs gently blown into his neck, or her panting into his ear, or whatever pleasure he gained from holding her hands above her head and having her thighs open for him to settle.
So long as it was Cloud, it always felt right. And it felt natural. And deserved. And about damn time to be this happy.
Tifa would let Cloud do whatever he wanted—save come without protection.
For now.
They said that mothers-to-be who practiced breathing techniques had an easier time giving birth. And Tifa was an expert in breathing.
~ ~ ~
To Cloud, seeing Tifa with tears in her eyes meant his weakness to prevent them. Her crying had always weighed heavy on him.
Not this time. It didn’t hurt.
Cloud’s hands shook fiercely and his voice quivered. He barely managed to get his words out and the thin ring around Tifa’s finger.
It was okay though, likely Tifa could hardly see through the tears that welled in her eyes and dripped down her cheeks anyway. They were so tender; his heart soared.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes,” she cut him off.
“Yes,” she fell to her knees.
Cloud spoke honestly with her. He poured out all the feelings he kept close for so long which, surprisingly, could easily be condensed, and which, unsurprisingly, always had been I love you.